SUBJECT 

and OBJ ECT 

, — 

REV. J. E.WALTER 





Class 1 

Book. 

Gopyright^N?_ 



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SUBJECT AND OBJECT 



BY 

REV. JOHNSTON ESTEP WALTER 

Author of "The Perception of Space and Matter," 

"The Principles of Knowledge," and "Nature 

and Cognition of Space and Time." 



JOHNSTON AND PENNEY 

WEST NEWTON PA. 
1915 



35 



lb' 



Copyright, 1915, by 
JOHNSTON ESTEP WALTER 



J. F. TAPLEY CO. 

NEW YORK 



QGT 251915 

©CI.A414225 



CONTENTS 
CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The Subject ob Soul 1 

I. Theories of the Soul — Hume's theory of the mind as 
the broken succession of our perceptions or thoughts without 
subject or substance — His doctrine of the knowable relations 
among the separately existing perceptions composing mind — 
His explanation of the knowable relations by foisting in a 
second mind of a peculiar nature — The theory self-contra- 
dictory and baseless, and involves a return to the theory of 
substance — The later form of the theory, in which mind is 
regarded as, not a disconnected, but a connected, succession 
of thoughts, a stream — Professor James' exposition — It is 
chargeable with similar inconsistency and errors to those 
of Hume's — Its grave faults especially as an account of 
memory and the sense of personal identity — Making a mind 
of the permanent and extended brain — II. The Soul maintained 
as a permanent and identical reality — Relation of soul and 
body — Mind as the producer of the conscious modes — Re- 
lation of the conscious affections and the producing mind — 
What do we really know of mind, and how? — Knowledge of the 
Succession of mind — Of its Permanence — Memory as a mode of 
mediate knowledge — Knowledge of the mind superior to knowl- 
edge of the brain and every other physical object — Knowledge 
of personal identity — Knowledge of the mind our supreme 
knowledge, as being the most direct and certain and the 
basis of the knowledge of all else. 

CHAPTER II 

Subject and Object in their Relation 75 

Subject and Object discriminated — The two sorts of objects, 
Subject-Objects and Object- Objects — (1) Relation of subject 
and subject-object — Subject-objects constitute a distinct 
internal procession and system — (2) Relation of object- 
objects to subject and subject-objects — Possible cognition of 
object-objects — The cognition is inferential — Comparison with 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

the "window" theory of perception — Projection of sensations 
and percepts — The immediate materials of both mental science 
and physical science are the same — Mental science and phys- 
ical science distinguished — The two worlds, the internal and 
the external, and their correspondence — Does the knowledge 
of self require the knowledge of other selves ? — Does the knowl- 
edge of physical objects require the knowledge of other per- 
sons? — The view that "what science finds in Nature is the 
mind's own latent wealth" — Dualistic realism since Locke. 

CHAPTEE III 

The Nature and our Perception of Matter 109 

Nature of Matter — Reality and nature of atoms — Perception 
of matter to be treated with special reference to the Berkeleian 
immaterialism — Relation of Berkeley to Locke — Berkeley's rea- 
soning against the knowableness and the reality of external 
matter — His doctrine of the relation of spatial extension to 
the so called Secondary Qualities, as color — His doctrine of 
causation within mind — In his teachings respecting subjective 
extension and subjective causation, Berkeley states and ad- 
vocates principles which constitute a substantial basis for 
a true representative knowledge of matter; and which, there- 
fore, turn about, so to speak, and serve as means of his 
own refutation — Berkeley's place in the historical development 
of the science of external perception. 

CHAPTER IV 

Truth 151 

Truth objective and subjective; or truth as fact or reality, 
and as correspondence of thought to reality — In this essay 
truth is taken as entirely subjective — The correspondence of 
thought to its object or to reality — Four sorts of truth or 
correspondence of thought : ( 1 ) Correspondence to the sub- 
stantial mind; (2) to other thought; (3) to past events; (4) 
to external objects — Truth and knowledge compared — Antago- 
nism of idealists to truth defined as correspondence of thought 
to objects external to mind — The same as Berkeley's main 
opposition to the doctrine of the representative cognition of 
external matter — Possibility of correspondence, and known 
correspondence, of thought to external things — Truth a mat- 
ter of progression — 1. How far do we make truth? — The 
"cognitive making" of reality — Reality as determined by our 
wishes — The making of truth by our thinking and wishing — 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The intellect as conditioned in the making of truth by the 
original and indispensable materials and forms given to it — 
Nature of the sense-materials supplied to the intellect — De- 
pendence of intellect also upon the action of external objects. — 
2. Stability of truth — It results from the constancy of the in- 
ternal and the external conditions of knowledge — 3. Utility as 
the criterion of truth — The real as the useful — All things use- 
ful to us because of the systematic unity and uniformity of 
nature — Neither reality nor truth, though inseparable from 
utility, is identical with it; they are more, they have a 
primacy — The conception of God considered as beneficial and as 
a "working hypothesis" — The truth of our knowledge of God. 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

CHAPTER I 

THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 

"To write a chapter for the purpose of showing 
that nothing is known, or can be known, of the sub- 
ject which the title of the chapter indicates, will be 
thought strange." These are the words with which 
Mr. H. Spencer opens the chapter in his Psychology 
on the i ' Substance of Mind. ' ' 1 The present discus- 
sion has its occasion in the conviction that the human 
mind is a permanent entity or substance, which can be 
and is known; and the primary purpose of the dis- 
cussion is to expound and defend that conception. 
This statement is made for the convenience of the 
reader, that at the very beginning he may know clearly 
and certainly the point of view and aim of the essay; 
and it is hoped he will not be repelled by the frank 
avowal. 

But this purpose, it must be admitted, goes against 
what seems to be the main psychological tendency of 
the time. It is the contention of many that "the ex- 
planation of psychic life demands the complete elimi- 
nation of the concept of substance ' ' ; and that the con- 
cept prevails only among ' ' unreflective minds. ' ' Some 
of the most zealous opponents deride mental substance 
as an " accursed idol. ' ' 

i Psychology, I, p. 145. 



2 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

It might be supposed that, of all realities, the Mind, 
Soul, Self, Ego, should be the most directly and cer- 
tainly known ; and that there should be complete agree- 
ment among men in all their main tenets and decisions 
regarding its nature and functions. Bespecting agree- 
ment in doctrine, the truth is just the contrary. Hardly 
a wider variety and opposition of theories are found 
on any other subject than on what for us, as some would 
say, is the immediate centre and focus of all reality and 
knowledge — the Self. 

The theory of mind now most prevalent apparently 
among professional psychologists is, that mind is the 
stream, flux, process, of our thoughts, feelings or con- 
scious states. The process-mind is conceived to be 
purely successive, purely temporal. It is the flow of 
the rapidly rising and perishing thoughts. It has no 
relation to a real or knowable permanent spiritual sub- 
ject or substratum, or to one entitled to consideration 
in psychology. Hume is the most distinguished repre- 
sentative of this hypothesis of mind. He is the chief 
protagonist for modern times of psychology without a 
soul. 

Another theory defines mind as the permanent pos- 
sibility of feeling — of sensation, idea, volition — or as 
consisting of the present feeling and the permanent 
possibility of other feelings. Its most distinguished 
advocate is J. S. Mill, who has expounded it especially 
in the chapter on the " Psychological Theory of Mind, ,, 
in his Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy. 
An important question regarding the theory is as to 
what we are to understand by a "permanent possibil- 
ity," or as to what a "permanent possibility" is when 
yet in its unrealized state or before actualization, or 
after feeling ceases. Mr. Mill does not furnish a clear 



THE SUBJECT OE SOUL 3 

answer to this question. He tells us what the per- 
manent possibility is not, rather than what it is. 1 It 
appears to be an abstract, non-substantial capability 
or potentiality suspended in the void, having no rest 
for the soles of its feet. If this be its character, then 
we must admit the conception is one of the most cun- 
ningly devised and elusive ever fabricated by the hu- 
man intellect. It is scepticism respecting mental sub- 
stance developed to the limit. We remark further now 
only on this specific point, namely, that, whatever mind 
may be as a possibility of feelings, it is, according to 
this theory, not a pure succession or stream; for per- 
manence is postulated of the ultimate possibility; and 
identity, time, and memory are thus apparently con- 
ceived as supported by permanence, and not only by a 
pure flow of momentary and perishing experiences. 2 

i He says of the permanent possibility of sensation [Matter] : "But 
though the sensations cease, the possibilities remain in existence; they 
are independent of our will, our presence, and everything which belongs 
to us." (Exam. Hamilton, I. p. 241.) The permanent possibilities are 
not supposed to be, or to be in, a universal mind that embraces or 
governs the particular finite minds and is the immediate author of all 
their conscious experiences. 

2 Mr. Mill makes some statements respecting memory and the uncon- 
scious which are worthy of note. In speaking of "stored-up knowl- 
edge," he denies that it is an unconscious state or action of mind. 
"It is not a mental state, but a capability of being put into a mental 
state. When I am not thinking of a thing it is not present to mind 
at all." (Exam. Hamilton, II. p. 7.) He says again of latent mem- 
ory: "It is not the mental impressions that are latent, but the power 
of reproducing them. Every one admits, without any apparatus of proof, 
that we have powers and susceptibilities of which we are not conscious; 
but these are the capabilities of being affected, not actual affections" 
(p. 9). He remarks also: "I am myself inclined to agree with Sir W. 
Hamilton, and to admit his unconscious mental modifications, in the 
only shape in which I can attach any very distinct meaning to them, 
namely unconscious modifications of the nerves" (p. 22). Mill here 
seems to favor the theory that the capabilities or possibilities of 
memories, and probably of all other mental states, are wholly in the 
permanent nervous matter. But it will be remembered that matter itself 
he defines as the permanent possibility of sensation; by which definition, 



4 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

A third hypothesis declares that mind and body con- 
stitute one reality, a psycho -physical organism; and 
that a mental change and a bodily or nervons change 
are phases of the same event. There is no interaction 
between mind and body, because they are one ; but there 
is an established parallelism between conscious states 
and nervous motions. The theory of psycho-physical 
unity and parallelism often ends in giving great su- 
premacy to the physical side of the organism, or in 
making it the " whole thing.' ' The mental modes are 
treated as if products or creations of the physical mo- 
tions. The latter have not a reciprocal like depend- 
ence upon the former. 

An older and long popular theory holds that mind 
or soul is a substance distinct from the body, and that 
the human constitution is a duality of mental and ma- 
terial substances. Mind, in its essence a permanent 
and identical entity, is the producer of the procession 
of the various conscious phenomena. It is supposed 
to be the permanent support or subject of the proces- 
sion, just as a material body is generally regarded as 
the permanent subject of its own successive and tran- 
sient motions. Though mind is substantially distinct 
from body, it is united with body in a close relation of 
interdependence and interaction. With this theory is 
commonly combined the belief that the soul survives in 
its integrity, with its memories and identity, the disso- 
lution of the body. 

It is our purpose now to return to the theory of the 
process-mind, the mind of the pure temporal series of 
feelings without substrate, that is, the mind of Hume 
and his followers, and to subject it to a more full and 

with these other statements, we are at length involved in an almost 
bewildering maze. 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 5 

particular examination. There is no force in present- 
day psychology more potent than that of Hume; and 
some careful consideration of the main principles of 
his hypothesis of mind will therefore be especially ap- 
propriate. It will also serve as a convenient prepara- 
tion for our own independent treatment of mind which 
is to follow. 

According to Hume's formal definition, mind is a 
pure abstract collection or succession of perceptions. 
He says : ' ' What we call a mind is nothing but a heap 
or collection of different perceptions." * Again: 
"They are the successive perceptions only that con- 
stitute the mind" (I 313). Perceptions is Hume's gen- 
eral term for ' ' impressions and ideas ' ' ; and these are 
the two great classes into which all the phenomena or 
contents of the mind are divided. He observes: "All 
the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves 
into two distinct kinds, which I shall call impressions 
and ideas" (15). These two kinds of " perceptions ' ' 
correspond to what are often called in the later 
psychology presentations and representations. They 
differ only in "force and liveliness. ' ' Impressions are 
vivid perceptions; ideas are faint perceptions. All 
ideas are effects and copies of precedent impressions. 

Hume notes three main characteristics of the suc- 
cession of perceptions which alone constitute mind. 
The first of these is, that the perceptions rapidly pass 
and vanish. He says: "All impressions are internal 
and perishing" (245) ; perceptions have no "continued 
existence" (265); they "succeed each other with an 
inconceivable rapidity" (312). The two other char- 
acteristics Hume repeatedly distinguishes and empha- 

i Philosophical Works, 4 vols., Boston, 1854. (Edinburgh 1825.) 
I. p. 260. 



6 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

sizes as of the greatest importance. The one is, that 
the successive and transient perceptions forming mind 
" exist separately, ' ' are perfectly isolated from one 
another. The other is, that certain relations are cog- 
nizable among the isolated perceptions; namely, the 
relation of resemblance, relation in space and time, and 
the relation of canse and effect. 

The isolation of the successive perceptions composing 
the mind is affirmed by Hume in the most express and 
decided terms. He says: "All our perceptions are 
different from each other and from everything else in 
the universe, they are also distinct and separable, and 
may be considered as separately existent' ' (290). 
' ' Our perceptions are all really different, and separable, 
and distinguishable from each other, and from every- 
thing else which we can imagine; and therefore it is 
impossible to conceive how they can be the action or 
abstract mode of any substance' ' (304). " Every dis- 
tinct perception which enters into the composition of 
the mind, is a distinct existence, and is different, and 
distinguishable, and separable from every other per- 
ception, either contemporary or successive" (320). 
"There is no known [real] connection among objects 
[perceptions] " (278). "All events seem entirely loose 
and separate. One event follows another, but we never 
can observe any tie between them. They seem con- 
joined but never connected" (IV 84). Mind, according 
to these and other like declarations frequently made by 
Hume, is a collection or succession of perceptions di- 
vided from one another by absolutely void intervals. 
It is like a flock of birds on the wing, or a stream of 
leaves in the wind, the individuals of which are sepa- 
rated by empty spaces. 

In his repeated and vehement assertions that there 



THE SUBJECT OE SOUL 7 

is no real tie, bond, or connection among the percep- 
tions composing mind, Hume generally has in view, 
and wishes to oppose, Locke's doctrine of mental sub- 
stance. Locke held to the existence of mental sub- 
stance, the " subject' ' or " substratum" in which it is 
supposed ideas "inhere," "subsist," are "united," to 
which they "belong," by which they are "supported." 
But he yet held also that though the mental substance 
exists, it is unknown. He affirms : ' * The substance of 
spirits is unknown to us ; and so is the substance of body 
equally unknown to us." 1 "All our ideas of the sev- 
eral sorts of substances are nothing but collections of 
simple ideas, with a supposition of something to which 
they belong, and in which they subsist; though of this 
supposed something we have no clear distinct idea at 
all. ' ' 2 Hume takes a very important step beyond 
Locke and antagonizes him, in asserting that mental 
substance is not only unknown, but does not exist ; that 
the mind is a collection of ideas without any supporting 
subject or substratum whatever, but self-sustained. 
He says explicitly: Perceptions are distinct and 
separable "and have no need of anything else to sup- 
port their existence" (I 290). "We have no idea of a 
substance. . . . Nothing appears requisite to support 
the existence of a perception. We have therefore no 
idea of inhesion" (291). "The understanding never 
observes any real connection among objects [percep- 
tions] " (330). "Objects exist distinct and independ- 
ent, without any common simple substance or subject of 
inhesion" (II 549). It may be remarked that Hume 
thus exceeds Berkeley, the nearer successor of Locke, 
by a very distinct advance. Berkeley rejected ma- 

i Essay, II. xxiii. 30. 
2/6., 37. 



8 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

terial, but admitted mental, substance. Hume emphat- 
ically rejects both. 

But, as above remarked, one of the most frequently 
and forcibly asserted principles of Hume's psychology 
is the doctrine that among the collected perceptions 
composing mind — which are separated from one an- 
other and are never connected by a real bond or tie, by 
a medium or substance — certain significant relations 
are cognized ; namely, the relations of resemblance, con- 
tiguity in space and in time, and cause and effect. He 
says of these perceivable relations: "To me there 
appear to be only three principles of connection among 
ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or 
place, and Cause or Effect" (IV 23). "The three con- 
necting principles of all ideas, are the relations of re- 
semblance, contiguity, and causation" (29). "We 
have already observed that nature has established con- 
nections among particular ideas, and that no sooner one 
idea occurs to our thoughts than it introduces its 
correlative, and carries our attention toward it, by a 
gentle and insensible movement. These principles of 
connection or association we have reduced to three, 
namely, Resemblance, Contiguity, and Causation; 
which are the only bonds that unite our thoughts to- 
gether" (58). Hume expressly observes that these re- 
lations are not real connections among perceptions, and 
are not based upon or made possible by real connec- 
tions; but are only relations which the separate per- 
ceptions have in our "thought,' ' "fancy," "imagina- 
tion." "When we say that one object is connected 
with another, we mean only that they have acquired a 
connection in our thought" (86). "The only qualities 
that can give ideas a union in the imagination are these 
three relations above mentioned. These are the uniting 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 9 

principles in the ideal world" (I 321). "We only feel 
a connection or determination of the thought to pass 
from one object to another" (II 551). "Events . . . 
seem conjoined, but never connected"; that is, they are 
conjoined in thought but have no "tie" in reality, no 
"real bond" or "real connection." Particularly, per- 
ceptions are not connected by the being of a unitary 
owner, subject or substratum. 

By a moment's consideration of this doctrine of cog- 
nizable relations, it becomes quite obvious that Hume is 
here introducing a principle that is entirely incon- 
sistent with the character of mind described as a collec- 
tion of separately existing, and never really connected, 
perceptions. To a mind so defined the cognition of 
such relations would evidently be impossible. The 
separation of the elements of mind carries with it the 
impracticability of perceiving the relations. What is it 
that will perceive the relations? Where is there any 
provision for any combining cognition of the collected 
perceptions "which constitute a thinking mind"! 
Hume posits no arch-perception, analogous to the 
"arch-monad" of Leibnitz, which might supervise the 
other perceptions and discern their relations. There 
is no thinking factor in mind other than each of the 
separately existing perceptions. These are the whole 
of mind. What imaginable means, then, can there be 
for any knowledge of the relations of the associated but 
isolated perceptions? If each perception may know 
itself, yet its severance from all others clearly makes 
impossible to it any knowledge of its relations to them. 
It cannot be supposed to leap the gulfs between itself 
and the others, and thus ascertain its resemblance to 
them, and measure the distance of its position from 
theirs in space and in time. That would require at 



10 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

least that each separate perception should be a soul, a 
person, capable of visiting his fellows, of coming into 
immediate real connection with them and embracing 
them. 

The two great principles of Hume's psychology (1) 
that the mind is a collection of separately existing per- 
ceptions, and (2) that there are important relations 
cognized among the perceptions — the relations of re- 
semblance, coexistence and separation in space, and 
succession — certainly seem to be, and certainly are, in- 
compatible with one another, even mutually contradic- 
tory. In the denned and avowed mind there is no 
acknowledged knowing factor beside the severed per- 
ceptions; there is not the slightest place or provision 
with them or among them for any sort of knower ; and 
their separation absolutely forbids the cognizability of 
the relations. A cognized relation between the con- 
stituent perceptions would be possible only on the con- 
dition of a real connection. The positive denial of a 
real connection necessitates the denial of a perceivable 
relation. Yet, as Hume constantly and confidently 
affirms the actual cognition of these relations, it be- 
comes interesting and important to consider how he 
construes in his own mind the feasibility of the cog- 
nition. 

This he does by blandly supposing and employing, 
over and above the avowed mind of the separately 
existing perceptions, what is in reality a second mind 
possessing a peculiar and remarkable character. This 
second mind is variously denominated "mind," 
"thought," "imagination," "we," "I"; and is repre- 
sented as, like an outside observer, surveying the suc- 
cession and mass of our perceptions, as moving among 
them, as combining and commanding them. It is 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 11 

noticeable that Hume makes this assumption with the 
utmost ease and serenity, without the slightest concern, 
as if it were a postulate which no one should ever think 
of questioning or condemning as inconsistent with any- 
other of his tenets. 

In the following passages this surprising conception 
of an extra mind is made clear and unmistakable. 
Speaking of "the mind," Hume says: "The qualities 
... by which the mind is conveyed from one idea to 
another are these three, viz., resemblance," etc. (I 26). 
"The thinking of any object readily transports the 
mind to what is contiguous" (133). "The relation 
facilitates the transition of the mind from one object 
[perception] to another, and renders its passage as 
smooth as if it contemplated one continued object" 
(314). "The mind has the command over all its ideas, 
and can separate, unite, mix, and vary them, as it 
pleases" (II 544). Similar and the same functions are 
attributed to "thought" and "imagination": "Our 
notions of personal identity proceed entirely from the 
smooth and uninterrupted progress of the thought 
along a train of connected ideas" (I 321). "A deter- 
mination of the thought to pass from one object to 
another" (II 551). "When one idea is present to the 
imagination, any other united by these relations nat- 
urally follows it, and enters with more facility by 
means of that introduction" (13). "The imagination 
has the command over all its ideas" (IV 57). "Our 
imagination runs easily from one idea to any other that 
resembles it"; and runs "along the parts of space and 
time in conceiving its objects" (I 26). Ideas have a 
"union in the imagination" (321). Likewise, in very 
many instances, "we" and "I" are represented as 
observing, uniting, controlling, remembering, the sep- 



12 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

arately existing ideas, objects, perceptions. Thus 
under these different names, and with these various 
representations, Hume very clearly introduces an extra 
mind which has no recognition or place whatever in 
the avowed mind of the collection, bundle, train, suc- 
cession, of perceptions. But, in view of the fact that 
Hume defines mind to the last as a collection of loose, 
unconnected, isolated perceptions, this quiet foisting in 
of a second mind as the observer, possessor, combiner 
and master of the perceptions is undeniably one of the 
most obtuse or, if not that, then one of the most un- 
scrupulous and flagitious surreptions and self-contra- 
dictions in the annals of mental philosophy, and on 
account of it he deserves to be everlastingly chas- 
tised. 

Hume's interpolation of an extra mind is essentially 
a bringing back of the spiritual subject of Locke and 
the substantialists which he had decidedly rejected. 
Locke had taught, as before remarked, that ' ' our spe- 
cific ideas of substances are nothing else but a collec- 
tion of a certain number of simple ideas, considered as 
united in one thing. ' ' x He variously speaks of this 
"one thing' ' or substance as something to which ideas 
belong, in which they inhere, subsist, are united, by 
which they are supported. But Hume would maintain 
against Locke that the only mind and all of mind is the 
collection of ideas ; and that they do not have and do 
not need anything to support them; that they subsist 
without any real or substantial connection, upholding 
themselves in perfect reciprocal isolation in the void; 
that we cannot form any idea of what a substance or 
inhesion is. The introduction of a second mind, how- 
ever, undoes all this; it constitutes a glaring self-con- 

i Essay, II. xxiii. 14. 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 13 

tradiction; it is a complete recantation; it is a clear re- 
call of the repudiated and excluded substance. In 
these many instances in which Hume declares of the 
second mind that it possesses, combines, commands, 
ideas and perceptions, it is evidently made essentially 
identical with Locke 's uniting, owning, supporting sub- 
ject, Locke's connecting of ideas in one thing Hume 
emphatically rejected ; but here he freely accepts what 
amounts to the same connecting. Locke's doctrine of 
the inhesion or subsistence of ideas in a common sub- 
ject he held to be unintelligible; but here he treats a 
nearly or quite identical inherence or subsistence as if 
it were perfectly intelligible. There is obvious in this 
procedure the singular turn in Hume's speculation, 
that the extra mind which he tacitly foists in comes to 
hold the chief place and to be the supreme mind; and 
that the separately existing perceptions, which by them- 
selves, with nothing else whatever, compose the ex- 
pressly avowed and denned mind, are made objects 
which it observes, unites, controls. Further, the inter- 
polated mind is made to give all plausibility to the often 
asserted cognition of the relations, among the isolated 
perceptions, of resemblance, space and time. 

This interjection of a second mind by Hume must be 
denounced as an inconsistency and self-contradiction of 
the most flagrant sort. But it had more causes than 
Hume's love of paradox and dilemma, or delight in 
acting the sceptic. It is in part a demonstration of how 
an important fact, which has been arbitrarily excluded 
from the theory of mind and ignored and denied, will 
at times force itself forward into recognition, compel 
respect, and accuse and retaliate its unjust exclusion. 
There was more in Hume 's experience of mind than was 
embraced in his theory ; and his full experience there- 



14 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

fore spontaneously and necessarily came into conflict 
with his theory. 

As illustrating and tending to confirm some of the 
main points that have just been dwelt on, we shall yet 
produce a familiar declaration of Hume, which has 
often been quoted as being a particularly clear and com- 
pact statement of what is most distinctive in his psy- 
chology. Its main doctrine has been by many regarded 
as embodying very important truth, and dominates 
much of the psychology of our time. "For my part," 
says Hume, "when I enter most intimately into what I 
call myself, I always stumble on some particular per- 
ception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or 
hate, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at 
any time without a perception, and never can observe 
anything but the perception. ' ' He soon adds, that men 
' ' are nothing but a bundle or collection of different per- 
ceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceiv- 
able rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and move- 
ment" (I 312). In here saying that he never can 
observe anything but the perceptions, or flux of differ- 
ent isolated perceptions, he means especially that he 
cannot observe, in addition to the perceptions, any con- 
necting substance among them, any single, permanent, 
identical, subject or support for them. 

This passage then is a very plain and direct affirma- 
tion of psychology without a soul, in opposition to the 
substantialists. It is also a further clear exhibition of 
the profound self-contradiction within Hume 's hypoth- 
esis of the nature and cognition of mind. No one will 
wish to question in the least the truth of Hume's as- 
severation, that when entering into the most intimate 
examination of himself he always stumbled upon some 
particular perception or perceptions; for it is undeni- 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 15 

able that, universally, mind is known or knows itself 
only in its conscious modes; but Hume is chargeable 
with a gross self-contradiction in asserting that he 
observed nothing more than the perceptions. He ob- 
served something more in the very act of denying it. 
The something more is in this "I," this "self," this 
permanent, identical, unitary, remembering being, 
which, as he says, always " stumbles,' ' etc., never " ob- 
serves,' ' etc.; and must therefore be something more 
than the inconceivably rapid flow of the perishing iso- 
lated perceptions ; must be something which stores up 
memories of perceptions that it experienced in the past, 
holding thus in the unity of knowledge both the present 
and the past, and certainly being capable of doing this 
only because it did not perish with the past perceptions 
but survives in its sameness to the present. Hume's 
theory of mind as a flux of unconnected perceptions in- 
volves the indubitable corollary that if, in his closest 
self -inspection, he never observed aught but the isolated 
perceptions, then he never observed even the percep- 
tions. He must catch more than the perceptions, or 
there is no possibility of catching even them, or catch- 
ing any one of them in any relation to others. 

We have been dwelling upon the two fundamental, 
but inconsistent and contradictory, principles of 
Hume 's psychology : first, that the mind is a succession 
of severed perceptions, without a single subject or any- 
thing to connect and support them ; and, secondly, that 
the relations of resemblance, space, time, and causa- 
tion, are constantly perceived among the severed per- 
ceptions. We have considered also his flagrant sur- 
reption of an extra mind which is supposed to survey 
the isolated perceptions, to observe the relations among 
them, to possess, unite and command them. It will re- 



16 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

ward us if we now turn back to consider further and 
attentively what Hume's original mind, denned as a 
succession of separately existing perceptions, is in and 
by itself, or what it is capable and incapable of knowing 
by itself, expelling entirely from the view the inter- 
jected second mind. We should note especially what 
the successive mind can know of time, personal identity 
and causation, or of the alleged primary relations of its 
swiftly passing constituent terms. 

First, it is obvious that the successive mind cannot 
know succession, cannot know its own succession. A 
succession of separately existing perceptions evidently 
does not implicate in itself alone the knowledge of suc- 
cession. The succession's knowledge of its own suc- 
cession is impossible, because, owing to the mutual iso- 
lation of the perceptions by void intervals, not one of 
them can know itself as the predecessor or successor of 
another. A perception cannot know its position in the 
succession, and therefore cannot even be cognizant that 
it belongs to a succession or that there is a succession. 
This manifest impossibility of the abstract mental suc- 
cession's being aware of itself as a succession and of 
any succession at all, should have convinced Hume, and 
forced him to the open and honest acknowledgment, 
that the mind must be something more than a train of 
isolated terms ; that the idea of succession imperatively 
requires a more adequate reason, a far more competent 
cause and support. 

Secondly, the impossibility of the abstract successive 
mind's knowing its own succession, makes certain the 
impossibility of its possessing memory and the sense of 
permanent identity. As a perception, because of its 
isolation, can have no knowledge of any predecessor, 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 17 

it can have no remembrance of any. It can not retain 
a knowledge of what it never did and never could know. 
And where there is no memory it is also evident there 
cannot be the thought of permanence and identity. 
The present passing perception could not know any- 
thing beyond its own momentary existence, if it could 
know that; and it could not have any thought of per- 
manence, because there is no real permanence from 
which the thought could rise and upon which it could 
rest. 

Induced probably by the manifest incompatibility 
between the ordinary idea of identity and his concep- 
tion of the pure succession-mind, Hume attempts to 
force the idea of identity into conformity with this con- 
ception. He would have us believe that the idea of 
identity is a fiction, or a mistake for what is really but 
the idea of diversity and of succession. The occasion of 
the mistake is the ease and rapidity of the transition 
of our thought along the train of our ideas. The dif- 
ferent ideas are taken, in the facile and quick survey, 
for one and the same; and their succession for per- 
manence. The essence of Hume's doctrine is couched 
in the following extracts: "The relation [of succes- 
sion] facilitates the transition of the mind from one 
object [idea] to another, and renders its passage as 
smooth as if it contemplated one continued object' ' (I 
314). "Our notions of personal identity proceed en- 
tirely from the smooth and uninterrupted progress of 
the thought along a train of connected ideas" (321). 
Identity is a fictitious notion which we entertain by mis- 
take for what is really the idea of a succession of dif- 
ferent objects or perceptions. The easy passage of 
the thought along the successive perceptions we erro- 



18 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

neously imagine is the contemplation of the same object. 
We substitute invariability for diversity, identity for 
succession. 

A conspicuous fault of Hume's account of personal 
identity is the gross surreption of a second mind, which 
we have already considered. He says there is a "tran- 
sition of the mind from one object to another,' ' a "prog- 
ress of thought along a train of connected ideas. ' • But 
the separately existing ideas or perceptions that are 
said to compose mind admit of no such transition or 
progress. The perceptions are "islands without 
bridges and without boats," and intercommunication is 
impossible. There cannot be a mind or thought pass- 
ing from one perception to another, and perceiving and 
remembering any relation between them; for there is 
no mind or thought distinct from the separate percep- 
tions themselves to compass them and think of them 
as in any conjunction. We need not dwell on Hume's 
sinister introduction and use of a second mind. He 
virtually assumes the existence of a real permanent and 
identical mind in the very sentences in which he de- 
nies it. 

Instead of striving to force the idea of personal iden- 
tity into consistency with his successive serial mind, 
Hume should have frankly fashioned mind into con- 
sistency with the idea. The clear, persistent and uni- 
versal idea of permanent identity, which is certainly 
not the idea of succession, but of sameness lasting 
through succession, should have proved to him that 
there must be something more of mind than a temporal 
series of severed perceptions; that within mind there 
must be, in addition, a permanent element as the neces- 
sary occasion and foundation of the idea of permanence 
and even as indispensable to the idea of succession. 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 19 

Hume's adored idol of the successive mind imperiously 
excluded from his thought all facts of experience, how- 
ever strong and certain, that would not do obeisance 
to it. 

Thirdly, the abstract succession-mind of Hume could 
never be cognizant of causation, power, or succession 
with power. Since not any of the separate perceptions 
composing mind could know itself as preceding, or as 
simultaneous with, another perception, it necessarily 
could not know itself as exerting power on or affecting 
another perception. Inability to know perceptions as 
successive or simultaneous, involves the inability to 
know them as cause and effect. But Hume attempts to 
make the idea of causation consistent with his theory of 
the succession-mind, by falsifying it as he falsified the 
idea of identity. He argues with much elaboration that 
the idea of causation is really only the idea of a mode 
of succession, as the idea of identity is but a mode of 
the idea of succession. Causation is but a customary 
succession of ideas. He asserts: "We have no other 
notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects 
which have been always conjoined together, and which 
in all past instances have been found inseparable ' ' (I 
124) ; and, "The union of cause and effect, when strictly 
examined, resolves itself into a customary association 
of ideas' ' (321). The result of his teaching is that 
causation is only constant or customary succession 
without involving any power whatever. The idea of 
power is a fiction or phantom ; the word is • ' absolutely 
without any meaning. ' ' 

Hume contends that the idea of power is not true or 
real, because there is no impression, or direct, vivid, 
original experience, of power from which it should be 
derived. Here is one of his most arbitrary denials of 



20 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

fact. We have in truth original and certain conscious- 
ness of power, in the voluntary command of the mind 
over its activities, or when one act of mind determines 
another. This experience is clear and sure, and per- 
fectly distinct from that of pure succession. Succes- 
sion of experiences without power, and succession with 
power, must be regarded as an original and primordial 
difference. They are both first facts of experience and 
reality, and neither can be rightly reduced to the other. 
It was then wholly perverse in Hume to attempt to 
represent causation as pure succession, and thus to 
make it consistent with his conception of the character 
of mind. He should exactly have reversed his action 
here, as he should have done in the case of identity, and 
made the character of mind consistent with the genuine 
experience. Just as the real experience of identity 
should have led him to perceive and acknowledge that 
there is more in mind than succession, namely, a per- 
manent and identical element as the necessary ground 
of the cognized succession and conviction of identity; 
so the real experience of causation should have per- 
suaded him that there is a real connection of power or 
determination within the mental succession, that is, be- 
tween mental cause and mental effect, as the indis- 
pensable source and foundation of the conscious ex- 
perience — a quality or factor upon which the experience 
is grounded and to which it corresponds. The final 
animadversion is justifiable, that hardly anything can 
be more wanton and false than Hume's juvenile con- 
jectures as to the nature and conditions of the ideas of 
mental identity and mental power or causation. 

We have dwelt at some length and with some minute- 
ness, possibly with excess, upon the nature of mind as 
understood by Hume and upon the extent of its capa- 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 21 

bility especially as to knowledge, and shall bring our 
survey to a close. Enough has been seen to prove that 
his theory of mind is, in its main or most distinctive 
propositions, a scheme of misrepresentation and in- 
ternal discord and falsity. Hereafter we shall see some- 
thing of the baneful influence it has exercised upon the 
later psychology. 

Hume has had and continues to have many to follow 
him in advocating psychology without a soul, or the doc- 
trine that mind is a pure succession of perceptions, 
ideas, thoughts, and in positively denying the cogniza- 
bility and reality of a permanent mental subject or 
substratum, or in denying at least that such a subject 
has any scientific value in psychology. But there is an 
important difference between Hume's conception of 
mind and that of most of his present-day followers. 
These maintain that the successive serial mind is, not 
as Hume taught, a succession of separately existing per- 
ceptions, of perceptions with empty intervals or abso- 
lute breaches among them, but a continuous, unbroken, 
succession, a flow or stream. With this meaning they 
speak of the ' * process ' ' of the mental affections or phe- 
nomena, ' * the stream of thought, ' ' the ' ' stream of con- 
sciousness,^ etc. The conception of continuity or un- 
broken flow they suppose is a truer knowledge of mind 
than the conception of the broken, and not liable to the 
grave accusations that may be made against the latter. 
This supposed superiority of continuity of the mental 
succession over discontinuity deserves the most careful 
consideration, a much more careful consideration than 
has been generally given to it ; especially respecting its 
accord with, and competency to account for, the near, 
persistent and confident knowledge and conviction we 



22 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

have of succession, time, personal identity, and mental 
power or causation. The connecting points of the 
closely successive terms of the abstract mental stream 
are too often made the habitat of surreption and fallacy. 

In our treatment of the later form of the theory of 
the successive mind, we propose to give somewhat 
special and exclusive attention to Professor W. James ' 
discussion of it in his Psychology, because his discus- 
sion is one of the latest and most complete and capable. 
This course will probably serve the interests of brevity 
and be found otherwise advantageous. 

Let us first consider attentively Professor James' 
description of the nature of mind, and his conception of 
the matter and scope of scientific psychology. He 
defines mind as the stream of thought or thoughts. He 
represents it as a stream of a unique kind in the decla- 
ration, that it is a "succession of perishing thoughts." 
The stream consists at any moment of only the one thin 
"section," namely, the present thought. The upper 
part of the stream, all its past, has perished ; the lower 
part, the future, has not yet come. Further, the stream 
of thoughts is conceived of as existing by itself, as ab- 
stract or detached, or as having no relation to or 
support in a real, or necessary, or at any rate known, 
soul or mental substance. Moreover, as the only part 
of the stream that exists at any one moment is the 
present thought, then the only mind and the whole of 
mind ever immediately known, the only "verifiable 
thinker," is the present passing thought. 1 If there is 

i "The passing Thought itself is the only verifiable thinker." {Psy- 
chology, I. p. 346. ) The / "is a Thought, at each moment different from 
that of the last moment, but appropriative of the latter, together with 
all that the latter called its own" ( p. 401 ) . "// the passing thought be 
the directly verifiable existent which no school has hitherto doubted 
it to be, then that thought is itself the thinker, and psychology need 
not look beyond" (p. 401). 



THE SUBJECT OE SOUL 23 

anything else in or known of mind, it can be known 
only mediately, by memory or by inference. 1 Such is 
Professor James' conception of mind. Mind is the ab- 
stract continuous succession or stream of the perishing 
thoughts. But all of the stream that exists at any 
moment, and can be immediately known, is the present 
thought. All we ever certainly know of mind in any 
way, is the present thought and the ideal stream to 
which it belongs. 

We pass on to Professor James ' notion of the content 
and scope of scientific psychology. First, he resolutely 
excludes the soul from the proper matter of psychology. 
He does not positively deny the existence of the soul ; he 
will allow us to believe in it if we care to do so ; but he 
is emphatic in declaring its inaccessibility to direct 
knowledge and its "superfluity for scientific purposes" 
(p. 350). The only thing of a mental nature that 
rightly comes into the science of psychology is the ab- 
stract stream of thoughts. If our psychology should 
embrace the soul, then it would embrace something that 
is not immediately known, and is of doubtful existence ; 
it would become metaphysical, and lose the character of 
strict and pure scientific psychology. 

But in addition to the only proper mental matter, 
Professor James introduces into psychology some very 
significant things that are not mental. Of this addi- 
tional content are the physical motions, the nervous 
molecular processes, that accompany and parallel the 
mental processes. The correlation of states of con- 
sciousness and states of brain requires that states of 

i "The bare Phenomenon, however, the Immediately Known thing 
which on the mental side is in apposition with the entire brain-process, 
is the state of consciousness and not the soul itself. Many of the stanch- 
est believers in the soul admit that we know it only as an inference from 
experiencing its states" (p. 182). 



24 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

brain shall have place and consideration in psychology 
as well as states of consciousness. Our author asks: 
"Whether, after all, the ascertainment of a blank un- 
mediated correspondence, term for term, of the succes- 
sion of states of consciousness with the succession of 
total brain-processes , be not the simplest psycho-physic 
formula, and the last word of a psychology which con- 
tents itself with verifiable laws, and seeks only to be 
clear, and to avoid unsafe hypotheses" (p. 182). He 
says also : ' ' Psychology when she has ascertained the 
empirical correlation of the various sorts of thought or 
feeling with definite conditions of the brain, can go no 
farther, — can go no farther, that is, as a natural science. 
If she goes farther she becomes metaphysical. ... I 
have therefore treated our passing thoughts as integers, 
and regarded the mere laws of their coexistence with 
brain-states as the ultimate laws for our science' ' (pp. 
vi, vii). It is worthy of express remark that Professor 
James does not treat the brain-processes as if they were 
abstracted from the brain itself, but as belonging to the 
brain and as inseparable from it. The brain is always 
regarded as the owner and immediate bearer of the 
processes, and as abiding through their transiency. It 
is therefore perfectly obvious that he introduces into 
psychology the permanent and extended brain with its 
molecular processes or motions. According to this 
view, then, the succession of thoughts, and the brain- 
processes occurring with and corresponding to them, 
together with the permanent and extended brain which 
is inseparable from the processes, constitute the whole 
of the materials of scientific psychology. 

One or two observations pertinent to this conception 
of the science of psychology should here be made. 
Professor James' apparent implication, that the brain- 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 25 

motions are as directly and certainly known as the 
states of consciousness, and that, for this reason at 
least, they are as fully entitled to a place in psychology 
as the related states of consciousness, should be re- 
garded as one of the gravest epistemological errors ever 
countenanced by psychologists. Another error of like 
significant character is the apparent tacit assumption 
that the permanent and extended brain is known more 
directly and certainly than the permanent mental sub- 
stance or soul, and therefore should be included in psy- 
chology, while the soul should be shut out. We are not 
wishing to be understood as advocating the exclusion of 
the brain and its processes from the science of psy- 
chology; but only as decidedly opposing the inclusion 
of these processes upon the supposition that they are as 
immediately and certainly known as the mental affec- 
tions, and opposing also the exclusion of the soul upon 
the supposition that it is not as immediately and cer- 
tainly known as is the brain. We shall hope to show 
hereafter that our contention is not without justifica- 
tion. 

It may be noted further, respecting the contamina- 
tion of psychology with metaphysics, that Professor 
James seems to be involved in a serious self-contradic- 
tion. He annuls his own proposition against mixing 
metaphysics with psychology; for, though he excludes 
from psychology mental substance and its metaphysics, 
yet in bringing in a material mass, the permanent and 
extended brain, he gives the readiest and warmest wel- 
come to the metaphysics of matter. 

Now we come to the most important question that 
can be asked respecting Professor James ' theory of the 
nature of mind. The question is crucial, and it is this : 
What account does the theory give of Memory and the 



26 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

conviction of Personal Identity, and what is the worth 
of the account? The best testing demand upon the 
theory of the soulless stream of perishing thoughts is 
for it to show how the experiences of memory and 
identity are consistent with or possible to the hypo- 
thetical mind. The theory seems to break down utterly 
under this demand. 

First, of Memory. Professor James very confidently 
claims memory, both retention and reproduction, for 
the abstract stream of perishing thoughts. He ex- 
plains the possibility and reality of memory by the 
postulate, that each thought transmits to its successor 
the record of its own individual experience and its 
recollections, or that each successor " appropriates," 
"adopts," its predecessor and all its contents. The 
sinking thought hands on to its rising successor its ex- 
perience and mnemonic stores; the rising thought re- 
ceives them. "Each pulse," it is affirmed, "of cogni- 
tive consciousness, each Thought, dies away and is re- 
placed by another. The other among the things it 
knows, knows its own predecessor. . . . Each Thought 
is thus born an owner, and dies owned, transmitting 
whatever it realized as its Self to its own later pro- 
prietor" (p. 339). It is said also, that the nascent 
thought immediately takes up the expiring thought and 
adopts it with all it contains ; and, again, that no other 
agent need be supposed than "a succession of perishing 
thoughts endowed with the functions of appropriation 
and rejection" (p. 342). It should be observed, by the 
way, that Professor James does not make quite clear 
what he conceives to be the ontologic relation between 
two immediately connected thoughts in the succession. 
Does a thought perish or die away by melting itself into, 
or becoming, its own successor, and thus carry along 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 27 

all it possesses including its memories? Is the relation 
in a peculiar way causal? In what respect are the suc- 
cessive thoughts distinct or different from one another? 
These questions are not clearly answered. 

It should be explicitly remarked of this hypothesis of 
a thought's transmitting its mnemonic stock to its suc- 
cessor, that memory is thus conceived as if it were en- 
tirely mental, as if the successive transmitting and re- 
ceiving thoughts were independent of relationship, for 
instance, with cerebral processes and substance. All 
that is distinctly recognized as concerned is the pure 
succession of perishing thoughts, the pure stream- 
mind. The present thought remembers, because it has 
received the experiences of its predecessor by imme- 
diate impartation or appropriation. It retains and re- 
produces, because of the direct gifts from its dying 
forerunner in the stream of thoughts. 1 

Professor James begins his theory of the memory of 
the stream-mind with an assumption of superlative im- 
portance, which deserves to be closely considered. He 
assumes as if it were an elementary and self-evident 
fact, that the present thought knows its predecessor as 
a predecessor, and holds implicated in that the knowl- 
edge of time, of the past, of succession. But in this 

i Elsewhere Professor James expresses himself in this manner : "In 
radical empiricism there is no bedding [no substance connecting our 
thoughts] ; it is as if the pieces clung together by their edges, the tran- 
sitions experienced between them forming their cement. ... The meta- 
phor serves to symbolize the fact that Experience itself, taken at large, 
can grow by its edges. That one moment of it proliferates into the 
next by transitions which, whether conjunctive or disjunctive, continue 
the experiential tissue, cannot, I contend, be denied." {Radical 
Empiricism, pp. 86, 87.) 

"In the same act by which I feel that this passing minute is a new 
pulse of life, I feel that the old life continues into it, and the feeling 
of continuance in no wise jars upon the simultaneous feeling of a 
novelty." (lb., p. 95.) 



28 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

assumption he obviously begs the whole question. The 
most important problem, the problem above all other 
problems for the stream-mind respecting memory, is to 
explain, or show the possibility of, the present thought 
knowing past thoughts as having been past — knowing 
itself as a successor — knowing that there is any succes- 
sion at all or that there was a past. The only "verifi- 
able thinker," he admits, is the present passing 
thought ; and the question before all others then is, how 
can this transitory thinker have any acquaintance with 
the past of which he has no immediate knowledge, how 
can he even dream of a predecessor or of the past? 

The two main principles of Professor James ' theory 
of mental-memory are these: First, a thought trans- 
mits to its successor its possessions, including its mem- 
ories ; or a thought adopts the possessions of its prede- 
cessor. Secondly, a thought knows its predecessor as a 
predecessor ; and it knows the memories which it has 
appropriated from its predecessor, not only as its own 
present experiences but also as memories, as represen- 
tations of the past. 

The direct transference by a thought of its posses- 
sions to its succeeding thought in the mental stream is 
a sufficiently conjectural and mysterious transaction. 
Yet it is not the greatest difficulty for this theory of 
memory. Granting that the transference takes place, 
it does not help or warrant the second principle just 
noted. The very grave question yet remains: How 
can the present solitary thought, which is only for the 
present, and whose whole inherited content is for itself 
only in the present and for the present, know any 
element of this content, or anything whatever within 
itself, as having come from the past or as representing 
the past? The possibility of such knowledge is in no 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 29 

wise made credible. There is no ground whatever for 
supposing that a thinker which never had a past itself, 
but has its only and total existence in the present mo- 
ment, can know, or can even imagine, any possession of 
its own, or anything else, as having had a past, or as 
having come down from the past, or as in any wise 
related to the past ; or can know that it is itself a mem- 
ber of a succession, or be aware of succession at all. 
There can be no actual, but only a fancied dove-tailing 
of thoughts, or "clinging together' ' by their edges. 
For there is but one verifiable piece, the present 
thought ; all other pieces have perished. Also there is 
but one edge, the edge of the present thought ; all other 
edges are gone. The edge of the present thought 
touches or clings to nothing; it subsists in the void with 
no correlate. What result might follow for memory if 
past thoughts perished not, or perished not quickly, and 
remained to form at every moment a temporal stream 
of some length, we shall not undertake to say; but it 
seems manifest that, if one of its experiences be felt by 
the hypothetical present transient thought as different 
from another in quality, yet it cannot be felt as differ- 
ent in time, as having a predecessor or as being a suc- 
cessor, as forming a new experience in comparison with 
an old. If it be cognizant of simultaneity, it cannot be 
also cognizant of succession. It would appear, finally, 
that if the present thought have the conviction of the 
past, the conviction can be only an effect which the 
thought produces at the moment in order to entertain 
itself with a fiction ; or be only the arbitrary effect of 
creative evolution. The thought cannot know any- 
thing as having existed before itself, but at the farthest 
know only itself and the present production or creation. 
It is quite evident of Hume's serial mind, in which 



30 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

the successive thoughts are discontinuous, are sepa- 
rated from one another by absolute breaches, that one 
thought cannot have any knowledge of its temporal, or 
of any other kind of relation, with a predecessor. The 
void intervals between the thoughts permit to any one 
of them at the utmost only a knowledge of its own being 
and momentary duration. The series cannot be aware 
of itself as a series. No thought can know that it is a 
member of, or has a place in, a series. It cannot have 
any memory of an antecedent, or of the past, or of suc- 
cession. By the most unscrupulous presumption Hume 
claims for his serial mind a knowledge of temporal and 
other relations of the terms which is manifestly im- 
possible. It is just as evident that the serial mind of 
the later psychologists, the mind of the continuous suc- 
cession, is as incapable of memory, of the knowledge of 
the past and of succession, as the broken serial mind. 
For all of the continuous mind existing at one moment 
is the present passing thought. This is the only mind 
and all of mind. It is divided from its predecessors by 
all the profound abyss, so to speak, subsisting between 
a thing that exists and things that do not exist; and 
there is no basis or possibility of the knowledge of the 
past as past, or the knowledge of any part of its pos- 
sessions as having existed before itself and having come 
from the past. It can know itself at the best, not as an 
heir, but solely as a present possessor of what is in its 
hand without its knowing whence. 

It is to be remembered that the stream of thoughts, 
the stream-mind, is supposed to be a pure abstract 
succession. Now many psychologists maintain as a 
fundamental principle, that a succession of thoughts is 
not the thought of succession; that a succession of 
thoughts, in and of itself, is not aware of itself as a sue- 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 31 

cession and does not possess memory. They hold that 
there must be a permanent element or factor by asso- 
ciation and contrast with which the succession or stream 
is known, or knows itself, as a succession or stream. 
They follow Kant's teaching, that the permanent " must 
always be coexistent with succession.' ' * But where is 
there a permanent element or factor in or with the ab- 
stract stream of thoughts? The hypothesis indeed 
claims, as we must recognize, one permanent element; 
namely, in the identical mnemonic stock that passes 
along the stream of thoughts, being handed down by 
each thought to its successor and constantly receiving 
accretions. "The identity,' ' says Professor James, 
"which the I discovers . . . can only be a relative 
identity, that of a slow shifting in which there is al- 
ways some common ingredient retained. The com- 
monest element of all, the most uniform, is the posses- 
sion of the same memories. However different the 
man may be from the youth, both look back on the same 
childhood, and call it their own" (p. 372). The ques- 
tion inevitably occurs here, is this identical body of 
memories a person or soul! If it be, then we would 
seem after all our wanderings to have gotten back into 
the company of the substantialists. But yet it is a soul 
of a very peculiar character : it passes through the suc- 
cessive thoughts, instead of having the successive 
thoughts pass through it ; or it belongs to them, instead 
of their belonging to it. 

We cannot be required to admit that the permanent 
stock of memories (if we should grant for the time its 
own possibility), which glides along the stream of 
thoughts, affords a permanence adequate to the work 
of making known by comparison the stream as a stream, 

i Kritik d. r. V. ( Hartenstein ) , p. 77. 



32 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

the succession as a succession. Succession certainly is 
known only by association with permanence; but the 
permanence must be of a more real and stable sort than 
that of the transient common mnemonic store. 

The inadequacy of the identical and moving stock of 
memories, in its permanency, to make possible to a suc- 
cession of thoughts the thought of succession implying 
memory, and of the whole theory of memory as be- 
longing to the pure stream of thoughts without a per- 
manent soul, seems indisputable. And Professor 
James himself in a surprising manner tacitly acknowl- 
edges the inadequacy and unsatisfactoriness of the 
theory. He does this by introducing a very important, 
a genuine permanent, reality in association with the 
stream of thoughts and the transitive mnemonic store. 
This reality is the permanent brain. To the permanent 
brain he now assigns the whole function of retention 
and the permanent possibilities of recollections. The 
retention and reproduction which he seemed to hold as 
belonging to the pure rapid stream of thoughts in itself, 
because each thought by melting itself into, or when 
"hugged' ' by, its successor, hands over its memories 
directly to it, are now assigned to the permanent sub- 
stance and paths of the brain. According to the men- 
tal theory of memory, ' ' each thought is born an owner 
and dies owned"; the nascent thought immediately 
takes up the expiring thought and appropriates its con- 
tents; each "section" of the stream of consciousness 
knows and adopts all those that went before it (p. 340) ; 
memory is possible because the successive thoughts 
"cling together by their edges.' ' A thought gets its 
memories thus directly from the preceding thought, not 
from the retention of the brain alone. It is just like 
one man bequeathing a herd of cattle to another and the 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 33 

same cattle being thus possessed in succession by dif- 
ferent men. But according to this additional, that is, 
this cerebral, theory of memory, the tendency to think 
an experience again has its permanent ground in the 
' * organized neural paths. ' ' Moreover, retention of ex- 
perience is ' ' neither more nor less than the brain-paths 
which associate the experience with the occasion and 
cue of the recall. When slumbering, these paths are the 
condition of retention; when active, they are the condi- 
tion of recall" (p. 655). It is also expressly averred 
that retention ' ' is not a fact of the mental order at all. 
It is a purely physical phenomenon, a morphological 
feature, the presence of these ' paths/ namely, in the 
finest recesses of the brain's tissue" (p. 655). The 
present thought gets its memories from the brain, the 
enduring and only retainer, and not directly from the 
preceding thought as was supposed in the account of 
mental memory. Retention, which seems to have been 
treated before as wholly a mental fact, is now said to be 
not a mental fact at all. In fine, not the passing 
thought, but the permanent brain, appears here to be 
made the real thinker and agent of conservation and re- 
call. 

Professor James' bringing in, to the side of the mind 
of the pure stream of thoughts, the brain as the one es- 
sential foundation and organ of memory, is a pro- 
cedure, quite analogous to, and forcibly recalls, Hume's 
introduction of the permanent extra mind as reviewing, 
owning, controlling, and remembering, the successive 
but separately existing perceptions constituting his 
only explicitly avowed mind. He does not, as should 
be kept in mind, treat the brain as if it were only a 
succession of motions, a succession of motions occa- 
sioning a succession of states of consciousness ; but as 



34 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

a permanent something enduring through motions, and 
the bed of permanent possibilities of states of conscious- 
ness. It seems evident, therefore, when we consider 
our author's emphatic rejection of the permanent soul 
of the spiritualists as a " superfluity, ' ' and the com- 
plete capability he ascribes to the abstract stream of 
thoughts of remembering and knowing succession and 
time, through direct communication of thought to 
thought, through the thoughts clinging together "by 
their edges,' ' that his adoption and employment of 
the brain as the permanent and supreme organ of mem- 
ory, are hardly superior in their method to the sur- 
reption and sophistry by which Hume introduces the 
extra mind and gives it in fact a place as the permanent, 
ruling and remembering mind, over the mind of the 
pure discontinuous succession. Professor James also 
has his two minds; namely, the stream of conscious- 
ness or stream-mind, and what is not a stream — the 
permanent and retentive brain. 

The course of Hume in bringing in the permanent 
extra mind, and of James in bringing in the permanent 
brain with its permanent and related paths, are both 
clear and impressive revelations of the great difficulty, 
we may say the impossibility, of remaining constant 
to the mind of the abstract succession, in the explana- 
tion of memory and the known relation of succession. 
Their addition and use of these notable permanent 
realities was but the result of the profound necessity 
felt by them for something permanent, something en- 
during in sameness, beside the mind of the rapid suc- 
cession of perceptions and thoughts, to make possible 
memory and the knowledge of succession and time; 
and thereby each contradicts and condemns his the- 
oretic mind as being quite insufficient. It should be 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 35 

remarked furthermore, that Professor James may 
easily and confidently dispense with the permanent soul 
of the spiritualists and declare that the "soul-theory 
is a complete superfluity, ' ' etc. (p. 348), if he may in- 
troduce into its place the permanent and identical 
brain regarded as endowed with capabilities and func- 
tions usually ascribed to the soul. Certainly, if the 
brain be supposed to be the permanent and unitary 
producer, retainer, and reproducer of thought, it is 
supposed to be a permanent soul of the greatest po- 
tentialities. 

We have been considering the possibility of the 
stream-mind's knowing succession and remembering. 
Now we go on to consider briefly the possibility of its 
having the conviction of personal identity. The two 
facts of memory and the sense of personal identity are 
closely related; the former is necessary to the latter; 
and much that was said of memory will apply also to 
the other. If it is proved that memory is impossible 
to the stream-mind, the same is proved of the sense of 
personal identity. 

According to Professor James, the sense of personal 
identity is a feeling of resemblance, continuity, and 
intimacy or "warmth," among the successive selves or 
thoughts. Pie remarks : i ' The past and present selves 
[thoughts, feelings] compared are the same just so 
far as they are the same, and no farther. A uniform 
feeling of i warmth,' of bodily existence (or an equally 
uniform feeling of pure psychic energy?) pervades 
them all; and this is what gives them a generic unity, 
and makes them the same in kind" (p. 335). 

Our author accounts for the sense of personal iden- 
tity by the same mode of supplementation by which 
he accounts for memory; namely, by bringing in to 



36 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

the side of the stream of consciousness a permanent 
and identical reality — the brain. The supplementa- 
tion becomes quite evident by a comparison of various 
statements in which the experience of personal identity 
is supposed to be fully possible to the pure succession 
of perishing thoughts alone, with statements in which 
the basis of conscious personality is conceived to be 
the existence and motions of the brain or body, which 
is not a perishing succession, but a permanent reality 
enduring through the mental and the bodily succes- 
sions. 

The unusual supremacy attributed by Professor 
James to cephalic and certain other bodily motions, in 
our sense of personality, or as constituents of self, is 
pronounced. He thinks he finds the "central nucleus 
of the Self " in "some bodily process for the most part 
taking place in the head" (p. 300). He says: "The 

* Self of selves' when carefully examined is found to 
consist mainly of the collection of these peculiar mo- 
tions in the head or between the head and throat/' as 
in breathing. "These cephalic motions are the por- 
tions of my innermost activity of which I am most dis- 
tinctly aware" (p. 301). "The part of the innermost 
Self which is most vividly felt turns out to consist for 
the most part of a collection of cephalic movements of 

* adjustments ' which, for want of attention and reflec- 
tion, usually fail to be perceived and classed as what 
they are" (p. 305). "The nucleus of the 'me' is al- 
ways the bodily existence felt to be present at the 
time" (p. 400). "We feel the whole cubic mass of our 
body all the while, it gives us an unceasing sense of 
personal existence" (p. 333). It should be observed 
that the body, head, encephalon, is treated in these 
citations and elsewhere not only as having or as being 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 37 

processes or a stream of motions, corresponding to 
the stream of consciousness, but also, unequivocally, 
as being much more than a stream of motions, namely, 
an extended reality which possesses and supports the 
motions and endures after them. There is here also 
the complete confusion of the stream of consciousness, 
sensations, with the concomitant physical processes. By 
cephalic motions are meant, not less than the material 
motions, the sensations that accompany them. Though 
what Professor James here confounds, he at other 
places clearly distinguishes, as in these propositions: 
"Psychology . . . assumes as its data (1) thoughts 
and feelings, and (2) a physical world in time and 
space with which they coexist and which (3) they 
know" (p. vi) ; "Mental and physical events are, on 
all hands, admitted to present the strongest contrast 
in the entire field of being. The chasm which yawns 
between them is less easily bridged over by the mind 
than any interval we know" (p. 134). It must spe- 
cially be deemed a failure of the gravest sort when the 
commonly acknowledged difference between the modes 
of cognizing the two kinds of events is entirely ignored. 
We have immediate knowledge of mental events; we 
have never immediate knowledge of physical events. 1 
This important contrast must not be disregarded. 

But we shall not dwell longer upon what seems to 
be the fundamental postulate of Professor James ' doc- 
trine of personality, namely, that we have the convic- 

i "The ordinary man is first aware of his conscious experiences, and 
only very remotely aware of his nervous system." (Judd, Psychology, 
p. 59.) 

"The sensation of 'muskiness' is known immediately . . . The knowl- 
edge of any object or material cause of the sensation is mediate." 
(Huxley, Hume, p. 302.) 

"Our mental states are known immediately; external things indi- 
rectly or inferentially." (Sully, Human Mind, II., p. 369.) 



38 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

tion of personal identity because we have a permanent 
and identical brain or body ; that the conviction has its 
foundation, not in the stream of consciousness alone, 
as sometimes seems to be supposed it might have, but 
has its deeper and real foundation in what is not a 
stream, that is, the permanent corporeal organism. 
This at least appears clear, that the theory which adds 
to the subjective stream of consciousness the permanent 
brain, something very different from a stream and en- 
dowed with notable soul-power, cannot have much that 
is worthful to say against the theory which accepts 
with the stream of consciousness the permanent soul. 
Their employment of the permanent brain is in fact 
the decisive testimony of the advocates of the pure 
stream-mind or stream-self to the total inadequacy 
of the latter to account for the conviction of personal 
identity, and is virtually a retreat to the position of 
the substantialists. The two parties agree in the im- 
plicit conclusion that the pure abstract stream of con- 
sciousness, having nothing but temporal progression, 
is in no wise sufficient in itself for memory and the 
sense of identity, but absolutely needs the adjunction 
of a permanent and indentical reality. One party re- 
gards that reality as spirit; the other supposes it to 
be cerebral matter capable of spiritual functions. 

Before concluding we should notice more fully a 
fundamental position of Professor James, which was 
noticed above, namely, the tacit assumption that the 
permanent and extended brain is known more directly 
and certainly than the soul, and therefore that it 
should be received into the science of psychology, and 
the soul excluded. He is full of confidence as to the 
existence and nature of the brain, but full of doubt 
as to the soul. He says respecting the knowledge of 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 39 

the soul: "If with the Spiritualists, one contend for 
a substantial soul . . . one can give no positive ac- 
count of what that may be" (p. 330). The soul is sup- 
posed to be inaccessible to direct or to any other sort 
of knowledge. But it is presumed of the brain that 
it is easily accessible to our knowledge, and that we 
have clear and certain cognition of its nature — of its 
permanence and extension, its permanent paths of mo- 
tion — and may confidently accept the occurrence of re- 
peated motions along the identical paths. 

When we consider the extensive and apparently im- 
mediate knowledge of the brain claimed by Professor 
James, and the great readiness with which he admits 
the brain into the science of psychology, it appears a 
very grave failure in him not to have shown at the 
same time with some fulness and minuteness, how he 
succeeded in attaining such a knowledge, in amount 
and certainty, of the brain; particularly, how by the 
stream-mind, a pure succession, the perception of such 
a different thing as a permanent material object is 
possible; or how, since by the hypothesis mentality is 
wholly successive, he ever happened even to think or 
dream of such a permanent material reality as he 
represents the brain to be. 1 The passage from mental 
succession to corporeal permanence is quite unex- 
plained. 

We must contend that this assumption of the direct 
and certain knowledge of the brain, of a knowledge 
deemed altogether superior to the knowledge of the 

1 It is an important point not to be lost sight of in a review of the uses 
some make of the brain in psychology, that what may appear to be 
the crassest cerebralism or materialism may however be, curiously enough, 
in fact, the most refined idealism; for by brain, head, matter, may be 
meant only a group of muscular and other sensations, or the mere in- 
substantial permanent possibility of them. 



40 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

permanent soul, is a psychological error of the most 
serious character. It must be maintained further 
that to the stream-mind, the mind of the pure abstract 
succession or temporal procession, the knowledge or 
even the idea of a permanent and extended object is 
an impossibility. It seems to be a demonstrable propo- 
sition, that the knowledge of the permanent soul has a 
priority over the knowledge of the permanent brain, 
and is the foundation, the indispensable condition, of 
the knowledge of the latter and of every other extra- 
mental permanent reality. 

The policy of "explaining mind by body" requires 
the most careful definition and limitation. It is clear 
and undeniable that to some extent mind must be ex- 
plained by body. For instance, the first rise of sensa- 
tions is dependent upon corporeal motion or stimula- 
tion. Sensations do not spring up spontaneously in 
mind, without the objective excitement. And it is evi- 
dent that characteristics of sensations, feelings, per- 
cepts — as their particular intensity, duration, exten- 
sion — depend upon corporeal qualities and conditions. 
But on the other hand, it cannot be said that bodily 
substance or its vibrations generate or create con- 
sciousness or the conscious modes. Again, knowledge 
of the body does not precede knowledge of the conscious 
modes, or condition knowledge of these. Knowledge 
of the material is primitively not even concurrent with 
the knowledge of the mental, but succeeds it; and is 
not the same in kind or equal in directness and cer- 
tainty. The two knowledges are separated by the 
sharpest and most assured demarkation; we may be 
clearly cognizant of sensation in the head, without any 
knowledge whatever of the cerebral matter and mo- 
tions. The cognitions are quite different in kind. We 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 41 

have immediate knowledge or consciousness of the 
mental modes. We are never conscious of the bodily 
substance or properties, but know them only medi- 
ately, inf erentially ; and the media of our knowledge 
are always the previously, the immediately and inde- 
pendently, known mental modes. As to manner of 
knowledge, body and mind are thus separated in the 
most thorough-going fashion. This division, as to pri- 
ority and nearness of knowledge, may be a true indica- 
tion of an ontological division. The question, Where 
does the mind end and the body begin! might be an- 
swered in general thus : at the line dividing immediate 
from inferential knowledge. 

We shall endeavor to justify these positions of the 
priority and nearness of the soul in knowledge, espe- 
cially the priority of the knowledge of the soul to the 
knowledge of the body, in the attempt, to which we 
shall now proceed, to present a positive doctrine of the 
soul. 

After so much criticism and negation the reader 
will likely be gratified with the proposal to offer now 
for his consideration something positive and construc- 
tive, a substitute especially for the theory of the ab- 
stract stream-mind; and may perhaps also anticipate 
some entertainment for himself in the opportunity of 
detecting the possible surreptions, paradoxes, defects, 
of the positive theory to be outlined. Our main en- 
deavor will be to maintain the existence, and trust- 
worthy knowledge, of the Soul regarded as a per- 
manent and identical reality capable of a stream of 
processes of conscious modes. 

There are two important facts pertaining to the re- 
lation of mind or soul and body which deserve some 



42 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

notice at the outset. Of these facts, one is the inti- 
macy of the relation between soul and body, or between 
thought and nervous motion; the other is the very 
great disparity, the very manifest incomparability, be- 
tween thought — sensation, passion, volition — and every 
known and imaginable mode of material motion and 
arrangement. 

The intimate relation of body and mind, and great 
dependence of mind upon body, are indisputable. The 
bodily conditions of development, nourishment, waste, 
age, undoubtedly affect the mind. Drugs, fevers, 
neural derangement, produce marked results in mind. 
A stroke on the head, by causing some disorder of the 
brain, may cause a suspension of consciousness. From 
the evident influence of body upon mind, some draw 
the grave conclusion in effect that mind or the mental 
phenomena are but products of body. Some derive 
the far-reaching deduction that, as a temporary de- 
rangement of the brain may cause a temporary cessa- 
tion of consciousness, a permanent derangement, or 
the disintegration, of the brain may cause the per- 
manent cessation, or may destroy the possibility, of 
consciousness. 

Because of the close association of body and mind, 
it is common to call them in their union the "psycho- 
physical organism. " But psychologists are seldom 
careful and precise to tell what part of the composite 
organism is psychical and what part physical, or what 
either is as distinguished from the other. As was be- 
fore remarked, great superiority is frequently given to 
the physical portion, it being regarded as, through its 
molecular motions and groupings, the generator of the 
psychical. All that is permanent is physical; the 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 43 

psychical is a fleeting process, with nothing perma- 
nent. 

Unquestionable as is the very considerable influence 
of body upon mind, yet directly over against this fact 
stands the no less evident and certain fact of the im- 
mense disparity or the incommensurability between 
material motion and every mode of thought or con- 
sciousness. This thorough incommensurability, and 
the distinguished character of the mental experiences 
and of our knowledge of them, require the conclusion 
that material motion and conscious mode cannot be the 
same; that such great unlikeness of nature makes it 
impossible for them to be but distinct phases of the 
same fact or event, and makes it impossible for the 
material to be the cause or generator of the conscious. 
Cerebral elements whose sole efficiency is assumed to 
be in their movements and changes of relative spatial 
position can never originate the vivid modes of con- 
sciousness. Matter in motion is not mind. These 
facts favor the affirmative postulations, that the mental 
phenomena have their ground and source in an entity 
distinct from and superior to the physical; an entity 
which has as real permanence as the physical, and 
which combines within itself the peculiar capabilities 
of producing presentations, conserving experiences or 
their effects, and producing memories, — of presenta- 
tion, retention, and reminiscence, — yet not without the 
support and stimulation of the physical organism. 

Though the disparity between the physical and men- 
tal is very great, it cannot be maintained to be total 
or absolute. If it were absolute, that should appar- 
ently make any intercourse or interaction between them 
impossible. But while the obvious disparity seems to 



44 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

render the generation of the mental by the physical 
impossible, it does not require us to believe that the 
physical cannot in some manner act on mind and ex- 
cite it to activity and production of conscious modes; 
or that there cannot be reciprocal excitation without 
generation or creation of activity by either for the 
other. Particular note may be made of some mani- 
fest correspondences between mental activity, especially 
sensation, and the accompanying physical process : the 
duration of a sensation answers in many instances to 
the duration of the physical impression; its extension 
to the extension of the impression; and its vividness 
and intensity to the force of the impression. It further 
appears, however, that because of the great unlikeness 
between the mental and physical, in essence and ac- 
tivity, especially between mental and physical energy, 
interaction between them must be governed by a dif- 
ferent law from that which governs the interaction of 
material objects — a different law which is as yet un- 
discovered and unknown. The principle of the conser- 
vation of physical energy as this principle regulates the 
interaction of physical realities, does not seem to per- 
tain to the reciprocity of mind and body. 

We come now to the cardinal question, How ought 
we to define and describe mind considered in itself, 
without regard to its relation to the physical organism 
or to any external reality? This question may be fitly 
answered as follows: Mind is an entity or substance 
that contains in itself, as original or constitutive ele- 
ments, the permanent possibilities of the different 
species of conscious modes — of sensations, emotions, 
volitions. The permanent possibilities are potentiali- 
ties ; or they are capabilities of producing the various 
modes of consciousness. The modes of consciousness 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 45 

are the realizations of the permanent constitutive po- 
tentialities. Again, the potentialities, or the mind as 
consisting of them, is an entity or substance; it is not 
an undmg or an airy indescribable thing such as J. S. 
Mill's "permanent possibility of feeling" seems to 
be. The mind is more than abstract activity, as the 
brain is more than abstract motion. The mind is some- 
thing that thinks, as the brain is something that moves. 
It is as reasonable to ask what the mind is more than 
its activity, as to ask what a revolving wheel is after 
it has stopped. Activity seems to require an agent, 
as motion requires a body. In fine, consciousness is 
not the realization of a permanent nothing, but of a 
permanent something. The mind as a substance holds 
in potentia all the phenomena of consciousness; and, 
as thus understood, it is an active and living, not an 
inert and dead, substance. It should be further re- 
marked, that the potentialities of consciousness should 
not be supposed to " inhere' ' in mind. They rather 
constitute the substance of mind, they are its struc- 
tural elements. As constantly related to each other 
and mutually dependent, they form one single mind. 
The mind is a real unit, consisting of the closely bound 
and interdependent potentialities; and capable of ex- 
periences that are various but yet unitary, or of a 
collective consciousness. To reverse the order of 
statement, this unity of consciousness, or "synthetic 
unity of apperception," is certainly far more than a 
mere appearance or abstract form; it requires and in- 
volves a unitary reality. 

Mind as the producer of the conscious affections, 
precedes consciousness. It is not made by, or depend- 
ent upon, consciousness; consciousness is dependent 
upon it. When consciousness arises, it is the identical 



46 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

mind passing from an unconscious to a conscious state. 
The mind may be said to precede and to produce or 
generate consciousness, just as it is said that poten- 
tiality precedes actualization; or as it is said by the 
materialists that brain precedes, and by preceding, gen- 
erates thoughts; or as is affirmed or implied by some 
that a permanent possibility of sensation precedes sen- 
sation. Actual consciousness is no more necessary to 
the existence of mind than rolling or flying is necessary 
to the existence of a billiard-ball. 

The mind is the sole cause of the phenomena of con- 
sciousness ; that is, it is the sole source of the content 
of these phenomena. They are wholly the actualiza- 
tion of the potential energy of the mind. The rise of 
consciousness is the soul's transformation of itself 
from an unconscious into a conscious entity. But the 
self-transformation is not the spontaneous activity of 
the mind ; it is at first excited or occasioned by the neu- 
ral processes. Hence, in the generation of conscious- 
ness, the mind is not only active, but is also passive. 
It is not the sole cause, for the neural motion is also 
a cause. But the mind is the sole cause, it is the only 
actor, in the production of the matter of consciousness. 
The neural motion is a cause only as a stimulant or 
agitator; it contributes absolutely nothing to the con- 
tent of the conscious modes which it excites the mind to 
produce. 

Eespecting the production of consciousness or 
thoughts, we here note this remark of Professor 
James: The bald fact is "that when the brain acts, 
a thought occurs. The spiritualistic formulation says 
that the brain-processes knock the thought, so to speak, 
out of a Soul which stands there to receive their influ- 
ence. The simpler formulation says that the thought 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 47 

simply comes. But what positive meaning has the 
Soul, when scrutinized, but the ground of possibility 
of the thought? And what is the ' knocking' but the 
determining of the possibility to actuality?" (p. 345.) 
The spiritualist holds that the brain-processes excite 
the soul to engender the thought ; that the whole activ- 
ity or causation of the brain is stimulation, that it in 
no way generates, as it is incapable of generating, any 
of the matter of consciousness. He maintains also 
that the soul has full constitutional rights to existence ; 
that it is not the mere serf of the brain, but is greatly 
superior to it as a cause. "The simpler formation," 
declares Professor James, i i says that the thought sim- 
ply comes" But no one can rest content without ask- 
ing the question, Comes from whence 1 ? Does it come 
from something, or from nothing! Does it come from 
the brain, does the brain hold in itself alone the possi- 
bility of the thought and the whole power of actualiza- 
tion? Peradventure, it comes from a "permanent pos- 
sibility" which is not a constitutional property of the 
brain. Or are we expected to adopt the conception 
of Lotze, that the soul-activity is a "new creation pro- 
duced by the one encompassing and universally de- 
termining Reality from its own nature as the supple- 
ment of its physical activity"? 1 The spiritualist an- 
swers, that the thought comes from the soul ; that it is 
produced by the soul ; that the possibility of it, as to its 
contents, is in the soul alone; and that the soul is a 
permanent reality possessing in itself, as constitutional 
attributes or elements, the possibilities or potentiali- 
ties of all forms of consciousness. The efficiency of 
the soul for the production of spiritual effects is unique 
and most intimately related to the effects ; and is neces- 

i Metaphysic, p. 442. 



48 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

sarily far superior to any efficiency that can be prop- 
erly attributed to the motions and collocations of cere- 
bral matter. The self -knowing, self -remembering ego, 
carrying a constant and irrepressible conviction of per- 
manent identity, and having as one mode or grade of 
its energy what we are all familiar with in voluntary 
self-control and experience, must, as a cause of thought, 
be superior to its physical associate. 

Especially as to the origination of our thoughts, Pro- 
fessor James himself says: " Thoughts accompany 
the brain's workings, and those thoughts are cognitive 
of realities. The whole relation is one which we can 
only write down empirically, confessing that no glim- 
mer of explanation of it is yet in sight. That brains 
should give rise to a knowing consciousness at all, this 
is the one mystery which returns, no matter of what 
sort the consciousness and what sort the knowledge 
may be" (p. 687); but at another place proposes the 
following conception: "For my own part I confess 
that the moment I become metaphysical and try to 
define the more, I find the notion of some sort of an 
anima mundi thinking in all of us to be a more promis- 
ing hypothesis, in spite of all its difficulties, than that 
of a lot of absolutely individual souls" (p. 346). It is 
hard to see a necessity for assuming any other soul as 
the immediate cause of the stream of thoughts, includ- 
ing presentations and memories, than the permanent 
finite soul which is in most intimate relation with our 
permanent nervous organism and entirely inside our 
epidermis, and of which we have a knowledge certainly 
not less direct and sure than our knowledge of an 
anima mundi. 

Eegarding the profound question of the exact rela- 
tion of conscious affections, or thoughts, to the engen- 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 49 

dering soul, realistic psychologists have made various 
representations. They have said that thoughts, ideas, 
"inhere" in mind; are "supported" by mind; are the 
changing possessions of the unchanging mind that is 
"behind" them; "point" to mind as something over 
and above themselves. According to Locke and Kant, 
ideas are appearances attached to an unknown mind or 
reality. Berkeley treated the mind as if it were a re- 
ceptacle for ideas, into which and out of which they 
flow ; ideas being quite distinct from the mind. 

Ideas cannot properly be said to inhere in, or to be 
supported by, mind, if there is implied the assumption 
that the mind is yet in some manner distinct from them, 
being back of them or under them. Ideas are in the 
mind, and the mind is in ideas; there is no sort of 
separation, that is, when ideas are existing. Mind is 
not an "it" to which consciousness adheres. Their 
relation is more intimate than adherence. Conscious- 
ness lives in the mind, and cannot live apart from 
it; and the mind lives in consciousness. Mind is no 
more apart from ideas than the brain is apart from its 
processes or motions. Mind is in its ideas as the brain 
is in its motions. 

It should be repeated and emphasized, that mind has 
no knowledge of itself outside or independently of its 
conscious modes. They cannot exist without it, and it 
cannot know itself without them. The unactualized po- 
tentialities of mind are not self -known. We may here 
use the language of Hume, and much more fitly than he 
himself used it : " When I enter most intimately into 
what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular 
perception or other. ... I never can catch myself at 
any time without a perception." A man catches him- 
self only in his perceptions; only in his perceptions, 



50 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

and not behind them, or under them, or in anywise 
apart from them. Perceptions and self are imme- 
diately together, there is no interval or division of any 
kind between them. Yet it remains true, that the mind 
exists when it has no perceptions, or when perceptions 
have ceased. The mind exists when it does not know 
its existence. Knowledge of itself is not indispensable 
to its existence. It subsists with its potentialities, be- 
fore consciousness, and when consciousness is inter- 
rupted. Consciousness is no more necessary to the 
elementary being or substance of the mind, than motion 
is necessary to the substance of the brain. As brain 
may conceivably remain when motion ceases, so mind 
remains when consciousness ceases. 

From the definition and the general account of mind, 
we may now proceed in an open pathway to particular 
inquiries, and especially to consider the two profound- 
est questions for us pertaining to mind ; namely, First, 
What do we really know of mind, or what does mind 
really know of itself? and, Secondly, What is the actual 
character or species of this knowledge 1 is it immediate, 
or mediate, or inferential, or a combination of different 
modes 1 

But before proceeding with these particular and 
direct inquests, it will probably prove advantageous to 
give brief consideration to a specific assumption, al- 
ready taken note of, which is made by many psycholo- 
gists; namely, the assumption that the brain or body 
and external material objects are definite, and clearly 
and certainly known, realities, but that the supposed 
soul is no such reality; that the physicist deals with 
objects of precise form and magnitude and permanence, 
but that the psychologist deals with no analogous ob- 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 51 

jeet; that a flower in the hand of a botanist, or a frag- 
ment of rock in the hand of a geologist, or a bone in the 
hand of an anatomist, is a thing of easy, exact and 
continued inspection, but that the psychologist has no 
such object in the changing and fleeting phenomena 
which he observes. Some who emphasize the existence 
and the clear knowledge of material objects ask sar- 
castically, "What do we know of the essence of the 
soul?" Already the remark of Professor James has 
been cited: "If, with the Spiritualists, one contend 
for a substantial soul, or transcendental principle of 
unity, one can give no positive account of what that may 
be." He constantly admits the possibility of giving a 
positive account of the brain or body or other material 
object, as a thing of definite form, size, structure, per- 
manence, but questions and denies any analogous ac- 
count of the soul. 

We again earnestly insist that in this assumption of 
superiority in our knowledge of the physical object 
over the knowledge of the soul, psychologists are sub- 
ject to a very serious delusion. When a geologist is 
scanning a specimen of rock, unquestionably the only 
object immediately known is his own subjective percept 
projected upon the specimen. The color perceived is 
altogether the color of the projected percept. The 
only spatial extension immediately cognized is the ex- 
tension of the percept. The color and extension are 
coexistent subjective attributes. Of the extension of 
the real external specimen in the hand, he has only 
mediate knowledge through the immediately known 
extension of the subjective percept serving as a repre- 
sentation. The like of what is here said of color and 
extension may be said of permanence. The perma- 
nence originally and more directly cognized in every act 



52 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

of external perception is wholly that of the mind. The 
percept itself has a quasi-permanence in being con- 
stantly renewed by the constant impression of the ex- 
ternal object; or the constant renewal serves as real 
permanence. Further, there is not only apparent per- 
manence of percept caused by continual renewal, but 
there is real permanence which is perceived by means 
of the renewed percept. This is the permanence and 
identity of the mind itself revealed by memory of the 
successive exactly similar percepts. Again, not only is 
the permanence of the mind the first and most directly 
perceived, but it is the necessary ground of the per- 
ception of the permanence of any and every other 
reality. Our cognition of the permanence of an extra- 
mental object is in every instance an inference from the 
mind's own permanence previously known by the re- 
peated impressions made upon the mind by the object. 
We conclude that the object possesses a permanence like 
that of the mind, because of the very similar impres- 
sions successively made by the object upon the mind, or 
of the very similar sensations occasioned by them. The 
impressions or sensations are both known as successive 
and inferred to be made by a permanent object, on the 
indispensable condition of the mind's own known per- 
manence. In these statements we suppose we are giv- 
ing expression to the real facts ; and therefore contend 
that psychologists are quite wrong in the postulate that 
we have a better knowledge of the brain, body, extra- 
corporeal object, than of the mind. The truth is that 
in every act of external perception, the color, extension, 
permanence, unity, directly known are properties of the 
mind's sensations and substance, and that we can know 
an extra-mental object only by representation and in- 
ference through the properties of the mind. There is 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 53 

then involved, that we have a more intimate, real, cer- 
tain and full knowledge of the mind than of any other 
reality in existence. 

From these preliminary general observations let us 
proceed to a more direct and special ascertainment of 
what is known of mind. 

First. We know the Succession of mind; that is, the 
succession of its conscious modes — of its thoughts, feel- 
ings, affections. These constitute a temporal continu- 
ous series, a stream, a process or aggregate of proc- 
esses. As to the knowledge of the succession of mind, 
psychologists are generally agreed. Many teach that 
we certainly know the temporal series of thoughts, but 
nothing more; for, as they contend, there is nothing 
more of mind to know. 

Within the knowledge of the succession of thoughts is 
involved the knowledge of the temporal unity of the 
mind. In apprehending the past and present thoughts, 
in holding them together in one knowledge, the mind is 
cognizant of unity, of its own unity in time. Further, 
in the aggregate of present passing thoughts the mind 
knows also simultaneity ; it is conscious of the unity of 
the simultaneous. Here it may be noted also that, in 
simultaneous spatially separated sensations, the mind 
is conscious of spatial unity, of its own spatial unity. 
Again, it is to be remarked that spatially separated sen- 
sations are not in and of themselves the sensation of 
spatial separation ; just as a succession of sensations is 
not in and of itself the sensation of succession. There 
is more involved in either case than pure abstract sen- 
sations. Moreover, in all the cognitions of the succes- 
sive, the simultaneous, the spatially severed, the mind 
has a peculiar sense of the unity of possession or owner- 
ship. It knows in the one moment, and in the one com- 



54 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

prehensive cognitive act, that it owns the present 
thought and owned the past thoughts of the succession ; 
that it owns the simultaneous thoughts, including the 
simultaneous thoughts or sensations that have spatial 
intervals between them. 

In the discussion of the mind's knowledge of its own 
succession and temporal unity, the most penetrating 
question is, What is the nature of this knowledge? 
Most psychologists hold that we have immediate knowl- 
edge of only the present thought or thoughts. Votaries 
of the stream-mind, the mind of the pure abstract suc- 
cession without substrate, would maintain that the only 
mind and the whole of mind at any moment is the pres- 
ent passing thought. We have found Professor James 
asserting, that "the passing Thought is itself the only 
verifiable thinker' ' (p. 346) ; by which we suppose he 
means the only verifiable thinker particularly as com- 
pared with the i ' soul, ' ' and as alone known with abso- 
lute directness and certainty. If now we have imme- 
diate knowledge of the present thought only, if it is the 
sole thought known with absolute immediacy and cer- 
tainty, what then is the character of our knowledge of 
the past thoughts of the mental succession? It is 
answered, that we know the past thoughts by memory. 
But there still remains the pressing inquiry, what sort 
of knowledge is memory? It cannot be an immediate 
knowledge of the past. Memory is rather, as Sir W. 
Hamilton has defined it, an immediate knowledge of the 
present and a belief of the past. The one present re- 
membering act is known as present, and is also believed 
to represent a past act. But what kind of knowledge is 
the belief of the past? What is it compared with the 
immediate knowledge of the present? How does it 
differ from the latter? Here we are brought to face 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 55 

one of the most profound problems in the epistemology 
of mind ; namely, How does our knowledge ever get be- 
yond the immediately known present thought? or how 
come we ever to know a past thought, since it is outside 
the sphere of immediate knowledge ! We shall pursue 
this problem farther in the discussion of the second 
great fact in our knowledge of mind, to which we now 
pass. 

Secondly. We know the Permanence of the mind. 
This we know simultaneously, and in the closest asso- 
ciation, with its succession. But here we enter upon 
disputed territory, and come into direct conflict with the 
votaries of the mind of the pure succession. They ad- 
mit the knowledge of the mind's succession, as they 
hold that the mind itself is only the pure succession of 
the perishing thoughts; but deny the knowledge and 
reality of permanence. Many of them explicitly assert 
that "Modern psychology knows nothing of a perma- 
nent mind"; and that "Psychology deals only with 
processes." "Mind is pure activity." To these dec- 
larations we would make the prefatory reply, that if 
modern psychology knows nothing of a permanent 
mind, this lack of knowledge is decisive proof of the 
defectiveness of modern psychology; if it deals only 
with the processes or succession of mind, it is far from 
dealing with mind in the fulness of its real and known 
character. Psychology must find place for the perma- 
nence of mind as well as for its succession, or it is de- 
ficient and false. 

For, in the first place, permanence is as well, as 
clearly and certainly, known as succession. The knowl- 
edge is essentially the same in both cases. It is a mix- 
ture of immediate knowledge and belief. As already 
remarked, we have not immediate knowledge of a sue- 



56 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

cession — of a succession of thoughts. We have im- 
mediate knowledge of only the present term of the suc- 
cession, the present thought ; of the past terms, the past 
thoughts, we have not immediate knowledge ; we cannot 
have, for they have died away, they are gone. We have 
only the memory or the belief of their existence. Our 
knowledge then of the succession of thoughts is a fusion 
of immediate knowledge and belief. The same is true 
of our knowledge of the permanence of the mind. By 
permanence, we mean continued existence from the past 
to the present ; the mind did not perish in the past as 
its thoughts did, but has endured, has been maintained 
in existence, to the present. But as we cannot have im- 
mediate knowledge of anything outside the present, we 
cannot have immediate knowledge of the past and per- 
manence of the mind. We have immediate knowledge 
only of its present existence as the one owner of the 
momentary simultaneous affections which are different 
in quality and in some instances spatially separated. 
The past existence of the mind we know only by mem- 
ory, by belief. Our knowledge of the permanence of 
the mind, therefore, like that of the succession of its 
experiences, is a combination of immediate knowledge 
and belief. But the belief of the permanence is as dis- 
tinct, certain, constant, persistent, as that of the suc- 
cession; we have the very strongest conviction that we 
existed in past days and past years and have endured to 
the present time ; and for that reason the permanence 
of the mind is as well entitled to recognition and place 
in psychology as the succession. To exclude it is quite 
unscientific and arbitrary. It is shutting out a part of 
the mental data which is as verifiable, as well attested, 
as the succession. 
Again. Not only is the permanence of the mind as 



THE SUBJECT OK SOUL 57 

well known as the succession, but it is itself necessary 
to the knowledge of the succession. Without the 
knowledge of the permanence, the knowledge of the suc- 
cession would be impossible. I have already dwelt 
upon the important fact, very widely admitted, that a 
succession of thoughts is not in itself the thought of 
succession. A permanent element is necessary in mind, 
or a permanent something, as is generally maintained, 
by means of which, by association and comparison with 
which, the succession of thoughts is known as a suc- 
cession. Kant's well known declaration has been 
quoted, that the permanent is always coexistent with 
succession. 

We have before contended that a knowledge of suc- 
cession, or a knowledge of the past, is certainly im- 
possible to the stream-mind, the mind of the pure tem- 
poral series. For the whole of this mind at any mo- 
ment, the only thinker, is the present fleeting thought. 
But how is it possible for this thinker to know any- 
thing that preceded itself? How can it grasp anything 
beyond its momentary self, or know dead thoughts as 
having been in the past? It was never in the past itself, 
how then can it have any knowledge of the past, or 
know anything as having existed in the past, or know 
anything as an effect of the past? We must insist that 
it cannot know anything outside the present, and 
cannot know the present else than as present, else 
than as without any relation to the past ; that memory, 
the knowledge of succession and of the past, is mani- 
festly impossible to it. We have observed how the 
devotees of the mind of the pure succession get on in 
the absence of the permanence in mind necessary for 
the knowledge of succession. Hume makes the out- 
rageous surreption of an extra mind which he treats as 



58 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

the permanent surveyor, possessor and controller of 
the bundle of successive perceptions constituting his 
original and only avowed mind. By this permanent 
extra mind he would show how the relation of succes- 
sion is known. Also we have seen Professor James, 
after excluding in so facile a manner the permanent 
soul as a superfluity in the science of psychology, bring- 
ing in the permanent and extended brain, and making 
a soul of it, or spiritualizing it at least to the degree of 
imputing to it alone the mnemonic function of reten- 
tion and the possibility of recollection. What is im- 
possible to the pure stream-mind is at last made pos- 
sible by introducing the permanent brain which is 
adopted as the sole foundation of memory and then 
implicitly of all knowledge of succession and time. 

Thus the succession and the permanence of the mind 
are known together. But, as was above noted, the 
knowledge of either is not an immediate knowledge, but 
a belief. What account now can be given of this belief? 
How may we suppose it to originate? Upon this pro- 
found matter we may contend for this much, that the 
thought and belief in both cases are the manifestation, 
the expression, of the reality ; that is, if there were not 
real succession and real permanence, there could never 
be the thought or belief of them. This is our alterna- 
tive against the groundless hypothesis, that a dura- 
tionless mind, or a mere passing thought, can know 
permanence. Such a mind could not know mental per- 
manence, for there would be none to know. It could 
not even imagine or surmise its existence. Such a mind 
cannot create permanence for itself, or know it by cre- 
ating it; for there is no evidence whatever that finite 
mind possesses a power of so great creative efficiency. 
Eejecting for this reason the hypothesis of creation, we 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 59 

are justified in the view that the best course for us, in- 
deed the only course, is to take these beliefs as they are 
and for what they are, until they are proved to be 
fictitious. We may conclude, at any rate, that our sense 
of the time or permanence of the mind has its neces- 
sary source and support in the mind's real time. The 
thought is the revelation of the reality; if it were not 
for the reality there would be no thought. Memory and 
all conviction of the mind's time, all belief of its suc- 
cessive experiences and permanence of existence, have 
their indispensable basis in the actual permanence of 
the mind. The mind existed in the past and has en- 
dured to the present, and for that reason alone it can 
think of the past. 

Above we have accepted the principle that the suc- 
cession of our thoughts can be known as a succession 
only in association with permanence; and have been 
making the specific assumption that the primary per- 
manence necessary to the knowledge of the succession 
of thoughts is the permanence, not of the brain or any 
material or external object, but of the mind itself. This 
latter proposition undoubtedly runs counter to the doc- 
trine advanced by many psychologists. Kant held that 
the mental succession can be known only in association 
with permanence, but apparently teaches that the per- 
manence must be, not that of the mind itself, but of mat- 
ter; and his teaching has had a very potent influence 
on the later psychology. In the notable section of his 
Kritik d. r. Vernunft entitled "The Refutation of 
Idealism,' * he says: "I am conscious of my existence 
as determined in time. All time-determination pre- 
supposes something permanent in perception. But this 
permanent something cannot be anything in me; just 
for the reason that my existence in time can itself be 



60 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

determined only through this permanent something. 
Therefore is the perception of this permanent some- 
thing possible only through a thing outside of me and 
not through the mere representation of a thing outside 
of me. . . . Consciousness in time is necessarily com- 
bined with the consciousness of the possibility of this 
time-determination; therefore is it also necessarily 
combined with the existence of things outside of me, 
as the condition of time-determination. That is, the 
consciousness of my own existence is at the same 
time an immediate consciousness of the existence 
of other things outside of me. ' ' 1 At another place he 
observes: "All change, in order to be perceived as 
change, presupposes something permanent in percep- 
tion; but in the inner sense no permanent perception 
is to be found. ' ' 2 In the following statement, he refers 
especially to "matter" as an external something pos- 
sessing the required permanence: "If, for example, 
we take the pure notions of relation, we find (1) that in 
order to give to the notion of substance something per- 
manent in perception corresponding to it (and thereby 
to demonstrate the objective reality of this notion), we 
need a perception in space (of matter), because space 
alone determines with permanence, while time (with 
all, consequently, that is in the inner sense) constantly 
flows." 3 

But we must hold that Kant 's dogma, if here rightly 
understood, is an error of the first significance ; it seems 
just the reverse of the truth. The mind knows itself as 
in time, or knows the succession of its states, first by 
means of its own permanence. Both mental succession 

iKritik d. r. V., p. 198. 
2/6., 207. 
3/6., 207. 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 61 

and mental permanence are cognized by the inner sense, 
and are cognized with equal directness and certainty. 
Moreover, instead of the mind being known by external 
permanence, the permanence of every external object 
is known primitively by the permanence of the mind. 
The latter is known first and most directly, and is the 
necessary provision for any knowledge of external per- 
manence. No doubt, the knowledge of the permanence 
and other properties of the not-self help to our ad- 
vanced knowledge of self ; but it seems incontrovertible 
that we have an original empirical knowledge of self 
and its attributes which precedes and is entirely inde- 
pendent of any external knowledge, upon which external 
knowledge itself is entirely dependent. We should 
maintain the general principle, that in our knowledge 
we move out from the mind. The mind is our starting- 
place, our centre and necessary basis and object of im- 
mediate knowledge. The knowledge of things distinct 
from the mind is mediate, and the indispensable ground 
of the mediate knowledge, the indispensable medium, is 
the immediate knowledge of the mind itself or its 
properties. Accordingly, we must know a permanent 
mind, before we can know a permanent brain or a per- 
manent anything else. We must know subjective per- 
manence, before we can know objective permanence or 
even be able to form any conception of it. We must 
find permanence within mind, before we can ever find 
it without. 1 

i It should be remarked that the external permanence, the permanence 
of space or matter, which Kant affirms as necessary to the knowledge 
of the mind's succession or time, is, according to the fundamental prin- 
ciples of his epistemology, really not external, but internal, — the per- 
manence of the mind itself. For, in his central conception, space and all 
its contents, including matter, are entirely of the mind and within the 
mind. Their permanence must therefore necessarily be the permanence 
of the mind that produces and contains them. If any permanent thing 



62 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

When considering above the particular character of 
the mind's knowledge of its past and permanence, it 
was affirmed that this knowledge is a belief. Memory, 
it was said, is a union of the immediate knowledge of 
the present with a belief of the past ; and it was noted 
that one of the most urgent and important questions 
pertaining to our subject is, What sort of knowledge is 
this belief? We return to this question. Some have 
answered, that the belief is inferential knowledge. For 
instance, Mr. F. H. Bradley writes: "My past self is 
arrived at only by a process of inference, and by a proc- 
ess which also itself is fallible." * He says again: A 
direct experience "can supply us with no reality beyond 
that of the moment" (p. 248). 

We have already admitted that the mind 's knowledge 
of its past is not immediate. Memory is not immediate 
knowledge of the past, because an immediate knowledge 
is possible only of what is present. The mind's 
knowledge of its past is then necessarily a mode of me- 
diate or indirect knowledge. But it cannot be prop- 
erly called inferential. For there is in it neither in- 
duction nor deduction, neither reasoning from particu- 
lar facts nor from a general principle. There is no 
discoverable logical process of any kind. There is cer- 
tainly no conscious inference, and not the slightest 
evidence of unconscious. 

Our knowledge of all external things is inferential. 
My knowledge of this solid rubber ball is of that charac- 
ter. The ball impresses my sense, and I infer the ex- 
istence of the ball as a cause. I reason from internal 
effect to external cause. But the mind's knowledge of 

exist outside the mind, it is, at any rate, unknowable; and hence 
cannot help to the knowledge of the time of the mind, 
i Appearance and Reality, p. 255. 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 63 

its past, though, like that of external realities, not an 
immediate knowledge, is not of the same sort of in- 
direct knowledge, it is not inferential. The severance 
between the present mind and its past experience is 
quite different from the severance between the mind 
and an external object. The two breaches are entirely 
unlike, and they are spanned by modes of knowledge 
that must be unlike. The past event pertained to the 
mind, belonged to the mind; it belonged to the same 
mind to which the present recollection belongs ; the past 
experience and the present remembrance are affections 
of the one permanent and identical mind. But there is 
nothing like this true of an external object and the mind. 
This rubber ball which I am perceiving does not belong 
to my mind now, and never did. It has always been 
outside. The ball then being outside the mind, and so 
outside the range of immediate knowledge or conscious- 
ness, can be known only by inference. But the past 
event of mind, because it was an event of mind, was 
once thus an internal possession of mind, while it can- 
not be known immediately since it is outside the pres- 
ent, is not known by any act that can be called infer- 
ential. 

The mind's knowledge of its past and permanence is 
a unique conviction or belief. It is the belief in the 
present experience that it represents a past experience. 
We can give no further account of it than the fact that 
the mind itself was in the past and has endured from the 
past experience to the present. The past experience, 
which we know, is gone, and therefore cannot be known 
directly. But the mind which had the experience is not 
gone, it abides; and the abiding, permanent, identical 
mind, because it is such a mind, introduces into con- 
sciousness, by a distinctive and extraordinary means 



64 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

and process quite unknown to us, the belief of the past 
— makes a present thought also a recollection. The 
knowledge of our past experience is a more certain 
knowledge than the knowledge of external objects, be- 
cause of the intimate relation the past experience had 
to us, in being our internal possession. The mind had 
a closer hold on its past than it ever has on any external 
object; and because of this closer hold, it continues to 
maintain by memory a closer enduring hold on its past 
than is its inferential hold on any outside object. 

It is the common opinion respecting memory that 
thoughts do not remain stored up in the subconscious 
repertories of the mind, and that recollections are not 
the rise of the identical thoughts again into conscious- 
ness. All thoughts are supposed to perish; but in 
perishing to leave vestiges or residual effects of them- 
selves which have the potency of recollections. These 
produce recollections upon the stimulation of neural 
processes, just as the original experiences were pro- 
duced upon excitation by like processes. Becollections 
are new productions representing former experiences. 
But very many psychologists hold that the only vestiges 
or residua left by our thoughts are physical, modifica- 
tions of the brain; that there are not any of a mental 
nature. It is usual to assert: "In all ideation, in 
every process of thought, the record of the conscious 
stream may be registered and conserved in the corre- 
lated neural process. ' ' * Such declarations are often 
made without any surmise whatever of a possible men- 
tal registration of thoughts. Sometimes a mental 
registration is expressly denied ; retention, it is said, is 
"not a fact of the mental order at all," but is wholly 
physical. 

i Prince, The Subconscious, p. 121. 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 65 

But we may well inquire, why should it be supposed 
that retention is incompatible with the nature of a soul 
or impossible to it ; that thoughts cannot produce in the 
mind itself modifications which should be permanent 
registers and the necessary grounds of reminiscences? 
Physiologists ask us to believe too much when they 
affirm that a modification of cerebral matter alone con- 
tains the possibility of the conscious vision of a past 
event. The product seems altogether too unlike and 
too great for the conditions. Surely more of a cause is 
needed for recollections, as more is needed for presen- 
tations. 

It appears to be tacitly assumed that the brain is the 
necessary and sole basis of memories because of the 
extraordinary multiplicity of its elements and their 
interconnections. The millions of the cells and fibres 
and their conjunctions are thought to correspond to the 
countless memories and their associations, and to be 
the proper permanent grounds for them. It is sup- 
posed that a soul or mental substance must be of a 
chaotic character, undifferentiated, without minuteness 
and definiteness of organization, unfit as a basis for our 
numberless distinct and discriminated memories or ex- 
periences ; that it has no such perceptible multifarious- 
ness and fineness and completeness of structure as the 
brain is known to have. We would reply, that modern 
psychology is burdened with too many such gratuitous 
postulates. The mind cannot have less wealth of at- 
tributes and a less varied and perfect structure than 
any material object which it knows. All things, includ- 
ing the brain, are to us what we know them to be ; and 
we know them only representatively by the attributes 
of our own mind and by abstractions and inferences 
from these. In looking at a brain all one sees imme- 



66 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

diately of its diverse parts and of its whole formation 
is in one's own imaging percepts. The perceiving 
mind cannot be less rich and complete in its properties 
and functions than the brain it perceives. By the 
variety of its own properties and experiences the mind 
is capable of thus knowing all sorts of material objects ; 
and is capable of more than this — it has experiences, 
as those of pleasure and pain, over and above what it 
ever perceives in or imputes to material objects. Giv- 
ing precedence to brain or body over mind as to or- 
ganization and in knowledge, is but an instance of one 
of the most powerful and habitual of human tendencies, 
namely, the disposition, which begins in the earliest 
years, to forget or disregard self when cognizing the 
not-self or the external. For the above reasons it 
should be maintained that mind is not primarily ex- 
plained by nervous organism, but nervous organism by 
mind. To reverse this order is to deny the real order 
of knowledge. We hold it then further to be a reason 
able proposition, that our thoughts may leave traces or 
residual effects in the richly endowed and organized 
mind itself, as really as they may occasion correspond- 
ing effects in the brain; that the persistent mental ef- 
fects may be an indispensable condition of memories; 
and such facts as that repetition of experience strength- 
ens recollection, and the near is remembered better than 
the remote, may result in part at least from the charac- 
ter of the mind and its permanent changes. The mind 
may be regarded as the prime agent in retention or 
prime holder of the potentialities of memories. The 
mind should produce memories as well as presentations. 
It should reproduce because it retains. It should com- 
bine in itself the possibilities and functions of presen- 
tation, retention and reproduction. 



THE SUBJECT OE SOUL 67 

Furthermore. If there is a soul, and if it has the 
capability of retention, it may be supposed to have also 
the capabilities of habit and heredity. Why should not 
the soul be able to acquire and possess habits! Why 
should it not be capable of inheriting and of bequeath- 
ing characteristics, including possibly the effects of 
use? Some psychologists there are who seemingly do 
not deny the existence of the soul, yet impute to it little 
or nothing of these capabilities. They tacitly assume 
that a spiritual substance must be lacking in them, or 
that it cannot have a real and indispensable and neces- 
sarily recognized share in habit and heredity with the 
body. 

But in what has just been said of the mind as possess- 
ing the capabilities of retention, habit and heredity, 
we have not desired to disregard or deny the offices of 
the physical organism in relation to these possibilities 
and functions. The influence upon retention and re- 
production, for instance, of bodily circumstances of nu- 
trition, waste, excitation by diseases and drugs, and 
age, we hold to be indisputable. What we would main- 
tain is, that the mind is the primary, the innermost, 
nearest and perpetual, ground of memory, habit and 
heredity. The body is a basis or support for the mind, 
and influences its processes; but the processes have 
their primary, their nearest and by far most important 
ground and cause in the mind, not in the body. 

With the knowledge of the permanence of the mind 
is closely associated the knowledge of its sameness. 
These properties may indeed be said to be one and in- 
separable. We are cognizant of them together in our 
sense of " personal identity." Our conviction of per- 
manent and identical existence, of being the same to-day 
that we were yesterday, and last month, and last year, 



68 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

is one of the most constant and potent convictions of 
the soul. How should we account for the existence of 
this conviction? The conviction must arise from the 
reality, that is, from the fact of the mind's actual iden- 
tity. We are convinced of permanent sameness be- 
cause the mind in its being is in truth the same from day 
to day and from year to year. The conviction arises 
from, is produced by, is the revelation of, real identical 
self -hood. It can not arise from, or be attached to, a 
stream or pure succession of dying thoughts, or to a 
momentary thought or group of thoughts. 

Perhaps the most important question for us at the 
present regarding the permanent identity of the mind, 
is the question of its extent or degree. Is the identity 
of the mind entire or partial! Is the mind in its suc- 
cessive and varying experiences the same always? 
Some have spoken of the changing experiences of the 
changeless mind. Some have supposed that mind 
must be changeless to be immortal. There are various 
curious facts regarding what has been called split-con- 
sciousness, divided self, or divided identity and ex- 
perience, that have drawn much recent attention. 

Respecting the above question, we may hold that the 
mind perserves sameness, but not absolute sameness. 
The constitutional potentialities which in their union 
form the one mind having normally one stream of ex- 
periences, maintain much identity throughout the whole 
course of life. But the potentialities cannot be sup- 
posed to remain in themselves entirely unchanged. 
They change by their own exercises or realizations. 
They produce effects within themselves. They produce 
effects which afterwards continually influence them and 
affect their actualizations. They may be supposed to 
undergo an evolution. Every stage contains what was 



THE SUBJECT OB SOUL 69 

in the preceding; but yet there is change. There is 
sameness ; but there is also difference. It may be diffi- 
cult to draw the line in mind between change and con- 
tinuous sameness ; but there are yet decisive proofs of a 
considerable extent of sameness. These proofs are 
chiefly in the identity in character of the conscious prod- 
ucts — of the sensations, emotions, and volitions. Many 
of our sensations remain much the same through life. 
The same permanent external objects excite in us the 
same sensations. The face of a friend is readily recog- 
nized after years of absence. Likewise many of our 
emotions continue nearly the same — the same in them- 
selves and in their physical expression. The anger of 
the man is very much like the anger of the boy. There 
is constant sameness in the character of volition, and in 
its relation to preceding thought and feeling. Further, 
every man's memory carries an identical store from 
youth to age. These identities in our experiences prove 
identity in the permanent capabilities or potentialities 
of the mind. 

There is a phase of. personal identity deserving 
notice, which may be called our moral identity. It is 
manifested in the feeling of guilt or responsibility for 
past intentions and actions. The sense of blame for a 
blunder or act of meanness or wrong, committed in 
youth, will cling to a man like a burr to the last days of 
his life. Here is the clear experience of life-long moral 
identity. With the approval of the whole community a 
man is hanged for a crime committed many years be- 
fore. This is a clear recognition of his personal same- 
ness enduring from the far past to the present. The 
present conviction or self -imputation of responsibility 
for past purposes, volitions and overt actions, is a dis- 
tinct and positive knowledge of the permanence and 



70 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

identity of the mind. It is possible only to a mind of 
such attributes. The past guilty designs and volitions 
are gone, are extinct ; but the agent that had them is not 
extinct, he survives, he has continued to the present; 
and in his permanent substance and permanent dis- 
positions and potentialities, is the bearer of guilt from 
the past down to the present. A mind consisting of a 
pure succession of thoughts, or of a present fleeting 
thought, would seem to be entirely incapable of such 
moral experiences. It is incredible that a dying 
thought should pass on its guilt to its successor, or that 
a present thought should feel responsible for a past 
thought that has perished. As there could be no con- 
viction at all of the past, there could be none of past 
wrong-doing. The descent of guilt seems impossible 
for the abstract stream of thoughts; unless the asso- 
ciate brain, by the permanence and identity of its sub- 
stance, should bear guilt along for the mental stream. 

Thirdly. Another primary property known of mind 
is Power. We are cognizant of this, for example, in 
the voluntary direction of the attention, and in striving 
to moderate or suppress a passion. Thus by volition 
the mind knowingly acts upon itself, or produces effects 
in itself. 

One of the great principles of Hume's scepticism, and 
one of his most flagrant misrepresentations of mind, is 
the denial of mental power. He holds, as we have al- 
ready noted, that our conception of mental power or 
causal connection in mind is quite fictitious ; that what 
we take for causal connection is a pure succession of 
perceptions with absolutely no power, but yet a suc- 
cession of a special sort, namely, a customary succes- 
sion. Our sense of power is but the feeling arising 
from a constant or invariable succession. He denies 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 71 

the existence of power or real causation as well inside 
the mind as outside. The advocates of the process- 
mind or stream-mind in many instances give very in- 
adequate recognition to the real character of volition 
and the exertion of mental power in it. They consider 
attentively the succession of our thoughts, but often 
bestow little or no consideration upon the actual causal 
relation within mind, upon the power of the mind in- 
volved in the action of thought upon thought. Among 
our primary and most certain experiences are indis- 
putably both succession and succession with power. 
The consciousness of power in volition is the revelation 
and representation of a real power in the mind. The 
thought of power has its source and basis in the reality, 
and has a likeness to the reality. 

We have claimed a direct knowledge of mind, — of its 
unity, ownership, power, amidst its varied simultaneous 
affections; and also a knowledge of the permanence 
and sameness of mind, which is not entirely a direct 
knowledge (for it involves a knowledge of the past), 
but is in part a belief, a mediate or indirect knowledge. 
But a very important question is here to be considered : 
Is the knowledge we thus have of mind a complete 
knowledge? is this knowledge coextensive with the 
mind's being! We cannot maintain that it is so; but 
must admit that there are elements, structure, proc- 
esses, of mind which are not reached by it, are uncon- 
scious, subliminal, and which, so far as they are known, 
are known only by obscure inference. For instance, 
we know nothing, save by conjecture, of the elements 
and structure in the mind which are the ground of the 
mnemonic functions of retention and reproduction. 
Some, as observed before, suppose that we have much 
more full and certain knowledge of the corporeal con- 



72 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

ditions of memory — of the elements and motion-paths 
of the brain. But this seems to be a fundamental error. 
It is opposed to the priority and greater nearness and 
certainty of the knowledge of the mind over the knowl- 
edge of everything else. 

Our knowledge of mind may be compared with our 
ordinary knowledge of a material object — as this rubber 
ball ; but, as preliminary to the comparison, a question 
of the first consequence to be considered is, What do we 
really know of such an object? We certainly know the 
magnitude and shape of the ball. We certainly know 
its permanence and sameness. But we have very little 
knowledge indeed of its ultimate elements and inner- 
most structure. If the ball were divided to its last 
particles, we know not what these particles would be 
found in essence to be, whether ethereal, or electrical, or 
of some other sort. Something like this is true also of 
our knowledge of mind. We know the succession, per- 
manent identity, power, unity and ownership, of the 
mind, — very much more than could ever be known of 
the mind of the pure succession of thoughts, the stream- 
mind, or than the stream-mind could ever know of itself, 
and very much more than mere abstract activity, — but 
we cognize not the lowest depths of mind, its final es- 
sence, its innermost formation. But this ignorance no 
more proves that we do not know the permanent iden- 
tity and power of the mind, than ignorance of the final 
elements of a material object proves that we do not 
know the object's permanence and extension. 

We remark in general, and in conclusion, that the 
knowledge the mind has of itself is its supreme knowl- 
edge ; supreme in the sense of being its most direct and 
certain knowledge, and the ground and the means of the 



THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 73 

knowledge of all other reality. The only immediate 
knowledge the mind has is its knowledge of itself. 
It certainly has much other knowledge ; it knows many 
things which are not present in time and space ; it has 
knowledge of objects that are greater than itself, — 
objects of longer duration, larger extension, and of 
superiority in every attribute ; — but only by a mode of 
cognition less direct and less certain. The mind has 
immediate and most certain knowledge of itself because 
the thing known and the knowing are in the closest pos- 
sible relationship ; the thing known is in the knowing ; 
the knowing is in the thing known. But such knowl- 
edge the mind has solely of itself; all other things are 
known only mediately, by inference and representation. 
No other thing whatever has so close relation to the 
knowing act or state as the mind itself ; everything ex- 
cept the mind is severed from the cognition of itself by 
an ontological breach, or by separation in time and 
space. The division, which is of the highest signifi- 
cance, of immediate and mediate knowledge, corre- 
sponds to and indicates a division of reality — a division 
between soul and body, or between soul and every other 
object animate and inanimate. It may be remarked 
further explicitly, that the mind always, if not neces- 
sarily, knows itself in comparison and contrast with 
other realities, especially other finite realities. But 
the comparison in every instance is based upon, or 
made possible by, the combination of two modes of 
knowledge — the immediate knowledge of self, and the 
mediate or inferential knowledge of the not-self. 

The means of our knowledge of outer realities, it 
should be expressly noted, are not media distinct from 
the mind, are not third things coming in between the 
mind and the outer objects, but the pure conscious 



74 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

modes of the mind itself. These modes are the grounds 
for inference ; they are the means of representation and 
depicture. Therefore the mind has, in the same cog- 
nitive modes, both an immediate knowledge of itself and 
a mediate knowledge of other things; just as, but in a 
different manner, it has, in the same present mode, a 
knowledge of both the present and the past. Our me- 
diate or inferential knowledge, which constitutes the 
great bulk of our knowledge, thus stands upon the nar- 
row foundation of our immediate knowledge of mind. 
This foundation is indeed narrow; but it is yet alto- 
gether firm, safe and sufficient, because it is a direct 
knowledge and therefore also certain, and because, 
though contracted, it is still in itself rich. 



CHAPTER II 

SUBJECT AND OBJECT IN THEIR RELATION 

One of the most common and important topics in psy- 
chology is that of the correlation in existence and 
knowledge of Subject and Object. Subject is usually 
defined as the thinker, the knower; and Object, as the 
thing thought of, the thing known. But, unfortunately, 
many discussions of this great topic are notable for in- 
definiteness and vagueness. This is true especially of 
the discussions of idealists. There is frequent failure 
to describe clearly the characters of Subject and Object; 
to show what either is as distinguished from the other, 
and the real nature of their relation to one another. 

In treating of subject and object it is of the first 
moment to consider that there are two primary kinds 
of objects, and that these kinds are very different. The 
one kind is of objects that are internal, within the mind 
or consciousness, mental objects, very properly called 
subject-objects. The other is of objects outside the 
mind and independent of it, quite fitly called object- 
objects. In their treatment of the objects of thought, 
idealists altogether neglect and ignore object-objects. 
This is consistent for them ; since their greatest denial 
is, that objects external to and independent of the mind 
or consciousness do not exist. 

Many distinguish subject and object in this wise: 
object is the aggregate of the vivid states of conscious- 
ness; and subject the aggregate of the faint states. 
The difference between the vivid and the faint states 

75 



76 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

of consciousness, between presentations and represen- 
tations, is manifest and permanent ; but while the two 
sorts of states generally differ clearly in vivacity, they 
are yet, at the same time, alike in being entirely sub- 
jective, pure subject-objects, pure states of the one 
real subject. A percept in itself is no more objective, 
and no less subjective, than a memory or any faint 
state of consciousness. To divide them as if they were 
not both alike wholly subjective, and as if the one was 
objective as the other was not, is a great error in dis- 
crimination, and a grave misuse of language. 

Subject and object are distinguished by many others 
as coordinates resulting from the differentiation of a 
unit — of one idea or thought or experience. Object is, 
by a mode of negativity, set over in opposition to sub- 
ject. But the antithesis is yet really only appearance. 
Subject and object are both in fact absolutely subjec- 
tive. There is but an apparent division of what is al- 
ways really one and indivisible; or an apparent ob- 
jectivization of what is never else than subjective. 1 

i Here follow from several authors illustrative passages ; which will 
serve also for reflection hereafter : 

"That though, within certain limits, we oppose the subject to the 
object, the consciousness to that of which it is conscious, yet that from 
a higher point of view this antagonism is within consciousness," etc. 
"The self exists as one self only as it opposes itself, as object, to itself, 
as subject, and immediately denies and transcends that opposition." 
(Oaird, Hegel, p. 123 and p. 169.) 

"Since subject and object only exist in the unity of experience, the 
one is not determined by the other, but with the other." (Baillie, 
Idealistic Construction of Experience, p. 198.) 

"All is indeed one life, one being, one thought, which only exists as it 
opposes itself within itself, sets itself apart from itself . . . and yet 
retains and carries out the power of reuniting itself." (Wallace, Logic 
of Hegel, 2nd ed., p. 165.) 

"The reality of everything lies in its pointing beyond itself to some- 
thing else; in other words, the real is always something which is itself 
and not itself in one, a unity in difference, or differentiated unity." 
(Nettleship for T. H. Green, Memoir, p. 110.) 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 77 

1. We proceed to consider, first, the true nature, but 
more especially the correlation, of Subject and Sub- 
ject-Object. Subject is the permanent and indentical 
Ego, Self, Soul. It is not an idea or thought, or a 
phase or division of thought; it is not a current of 
thoughts ; but an entity which exists with, and yet may 
exist without, thought or consciousness, and is known 
as identical and enduring. 

Subject-objects are all properties or modes of the 
subject — its sensations, percepts, images, memories. 
The more conspicuous and frequently considered sub- 
ject-objects are percepts, that is, our ideas of external 
things. Subject-objects are entirely subjective or men- 
tal in their nature; they are pure conscious modes of 
the subject or mind, having no element or property 
from any source outside or different from the mind; 
they are one with mind. For illustration, take the 
percept of an apple. This percept includes color and 
extension. Color is reckoned among the "secondary" 
qualities of objects; extension, among the ''primary." 
But both the color and extension of the percept, both 
the secondary and primary qualities, are purely men- 
tal. The color is not alone mental, and the extension 
non-mental or extra-mental. The extension is not 
communicated to the mind from without and then by 
the mind combined with the subjective color. Both 
color and extension are in the mind and of the mind, 
are equally and altogether mental. In fact, the color 

"We start then with this duality of subject and object in the unity 
of experience. What a subject without objects, or what objects without 
a subject, would be, is indeed, as we are often told, unknowable; for 
in truth the knowledge of either apart is a contradiction." (Ward, 
Naturalism and Agnosticism, II. p. 112.) 

"What we find is not a dualism of mind and matter, but a duality of 
subject and object in the unity of experience." (lb., p. 97.) 



78 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

and extension are not two, but one; that is, they are 
the inseparable original properties of one sensation. 
Color is in itself extended; extension is its constitu- 
tional attribute. Therefore, as forming a unitary and 
indivisible sensation, both properties must be in the 
same place; the extension must be in and of the mind as 
much and as certainly as the color. 

As to subject-object and subject in their relation 
and contrast, it should be expressly remarked, that 
they are not alike in nature or in function, they are not 
coordinate relatives or opposites, they are not equals 
in antithesis and synthesis. The subject-object is the 
transitory mode of the permanent subject, and may be 
either "vivid" or "faint." It is the pure product of 
the subject, generated from a permanent potentiality 
in the subject. Thus it is dependent upon the sub- 
ject, and the subject independent of it. But the rela- 
tion of the two is of the closest from first to last. The 
subject produces subject-objects, but never actually 
separates itself from them, or them from itself; it is 
one with them and knows itself in them. They are 
the conscious modes or states of the subject, mysteri- 
ously produced by the subject, always ontologically 
inseparable from, and always embracing the knowl- 
edge of, the subject. Subject-object cannot exist with- 
out and apart from subject; subject does not know 
itself apart from and independently of subject-object. 
They are together in existence and inseparable in 
knowledge. 

Subject-objects are known immediately or in con- 
sciousness; and are the only objects so known by the 
mind. They are known immediately, because they are 
immediate to the mind, "given," present; present in 
the sense of existing within the mind and being modes 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 79 

of mind. For the same reason we are properly said 
to be conscious of subject-objects only. The light of 
consciousness is wholly produced by the mind and is 
wholly within the mind; and therefore only objects 
that are in the mind are in that light, all other objects 
are outside of it. If, and so far as, other objects are 
known, they are known without the light of conscious- 
ness, or, so to speak, in the dark. 

Subject-objects form a distinct procession and sys- 
tem, we may say a distinct world — the colored and 
luminous world, the internal conscious world. This 
world, in its whole content and structure, is formed by 
the mind, or by the constructive power of the mind, 
the intellect. It is quite distinct from the objective or 
external world, and owes not the least of its content 
to the latter. It is entirely the result of the produc- 
tive and constructive processes of the mind; although 
in these functions the mind may owe much to the ex- 
citation of external things. Unquestionably, subjective 
objects come to appear as if outside of us, of our mind 
and body, and far away, as also entirely independent 
of us. In other words, we objectivize them. In this 
manner, it may be truly said, "the mind sets itself in 
antithesis to itself.' ' But this very remarkable fact 
of objectivization or projection is appearance alto- 
gether. All the colors and light which so certainly 
seem to be outside of us and to be attributes of ex- 
ternal things, are really within the mind, are pure in- 
ternal sensations, attributes of subject-objects; in no 
wise the real, but only the apparent, attributes of ex- 
ternal objects. Eeal subjectivity, and phenomenal ob- 
jectivity, have been generally understood and admitted 
of the colors and other " secondary' ' qualities of sub- 
ject-objects ; but they are as true of their primary qual- 



80 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

ity of extension. As above remarked, color is itself 
extended, extension is its inseparable attribute; and 
when color is projected, its extension must go with it. 

It should be further observed that the procession 
and world of subject-objects, this mental world, this in- 
ternal Nature, has its remarkable character and laws 
as a system. It has its regular coexistences, sequences, 
and causal connections. Its various and multitudinous 
objects occur together, and succeed one another, many 
successions being causal or consisting of cause and 
effect, with multiplied uniformities. These facts all 
manifest the wonderful productivity and constructive- 
ness of the subject. So much for the relation of sub- 
ject and subject-objects in existence and in knowledge. 

2. Let us go on to consider next the relation, alike 
interesting and important, of object-objects to subject 
and subject-objects. Already we have denned object- 
objects as things outside the mind and independent of 
it or its thinking or consciousness. That such things 
exist is the fundamental doctrine of the dualistic real- 
ists. It is believed and defended by them as ardently 
as it is denied and derided by idealists. The latter 
contend that the existence of objects out of mind or 
thought and independent is altogether impossible ; that 
the real is the rational ; that to exist is to be thought ; 
that a division or cleft or space between mind and ob- 
jects, which puts objects over against mind as inde- 
pendent realities, is not to be considered. It is all 
self-contradictory and absurd. The realists main- 
tain in opposition that, however they may have come 
to exist, there are certainly objects external to and 
independent of our mind or thought. They adduce the 
existence of other men as a capital instance. The fact 
of other men, and their invincible antagonism to being 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 81 

regarded as our pure subject-objects, or as only prod- 
ucts or modes of our mind, they maintain, doom ideal- 
istic monism to an eternal overthrow. Eealists hold 
that what idealists say of objects is indeed largely 
true of subject-objects ; but flagrantly untrue of object- 
objects. 

In asserting that there are objects external to and in- 
pendent of mind or thought, we have meant the finite, 
the human, mind or thought. But when idealistic 
monists deny the possibility of objects existing outside 
and independent of mind, they mean, or often mean, 
"all mind"; not the human only, but both the human 
and the Divine. This is in consequence of their iden- 
tifying the human and Divine minds. They declare 
that the human mind, self, consciousness, experience, 
is but a "fragment" or "limited mode" of the Divine 
mind, self, consciousness, experience. There is unity 
or identity, not duality. But there appear to be the 
strongest reasons for rejecting the hypothesis of iden- 
tity, and for maintaining that the human and Divine 
are two minds. The human and the Divine are evi- 
dently divided in this wise: that there is immediate 
knowledge of the human, and nothing but an inferential 
knowledge of the Divine. This clear difference of 
knowledge must be supposed to be dependent upon a 
separation or duality of existence. But the great ques- 
tion of the relation of the human and Divine minds 
cannot be fully discussed here. There seems, however, 
to be warrant for believing in a genuine duality, and 
therefore for holding in regard to the relation of ob- 
ject-objects to mind, that there are two distinct ques- 
tions which may and should be treated separately; 
namely, the question of their relation to the human 
mind, and that of their relation to the Divine mind. 



82 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

Of the former relation we may claim to have some 
definite knowledge; of the latter we have very little 
knowledge. We may suppose that, in respect to ob- 
ject-objects and also all other reality, God is both im- 
manent and transcendent; but we must admit that these 
contradictories are not easily reconciled or held to- 
gether. In our further discussion of the relation of 
object-objects to mind, we shall have in view the human 
mind alone. 

We have been contending that there are objects ex- 
ternal to and independent of the mind or conscious- 
ness ; and also that they are knowable. It must be ac- 
knowledged that the question of the knowableness of 
such objects possesses a priority; since we can claim 
existence only for what we know. 

How idealists confidently and persistently declaim 
against the possibility of cognizing external objects, is 
well known and need not be dwelt upon here. As be- 
fore in part noted, they argue that such knowledge is 
self-contradictory and impossible ; that to know a thing 
is necessarily to have it within mind or consciousness ; 
that an object exists for the subject only in being ap- 
prehended by it, and that "thought can never go be- 
yond itself "; that the "physical thing and our idea of it 
are one object, " a creation of the mind; etc., etc. Vig- 
orously opposed to the positions of the idealists have 
been various sects of realists who have sought to main- 
tain such directly antagonistic positions as the fol- 
lowing : that, with the consciousness of an act of knowl- 
edge, there goes the consciousness of the external ob- 
ject to which the act is relative; that there is a native 
or necessary and certain belief of external realities, 
which is universal in men; that our knowledge of the 
external is a belief of which the negative is incon- 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 83 

ceivable; that with the consciousness of muscular sen- 
sations of resistance, or of voluntary energy opposed, 
there is combined the consciousness of external resist- 
ing objects ; that, in thinking of its own limits, the mind 
inevitably transcends them, and becomes cognizant of 
other finite beings, even of the Infinite. 

The Scottish school of philosophy, in their theory 
of external perception, contend for an immediate knowl- 
edge of extra-mental objects. This knowledge they 
define as an invincible and certain belief which is con- 
stitutional or natural to men. 1 But this school, for- 
merly so numerous and influential in this country, un- 
doubtedly failed to maintain their theory, and have 
suffered a great loss of prestige. Their theory has 
been largely displaced in our institutions of learning 
by hypotheses composed of English and German ideal- 
ism — the idealism of Berkeley and Hume and that of 
Kant and his followers. The Scottish philosophers 
failed in not exhibiting a scientific warrant or justifica- 
tion for the avowed necessary belief in external things. 
They did not sufficiently consider that the belief must 
have evidence or a basis in knowledge. As to the per- 
ception of the external, we cannot rightly stop with 

i "That our sensations of touch indicate something external, extended, 
figured, hard and soft, is not a deduction of reason, but a natural prin- 
ciple. The belief of it, and the very conception of it, are equally parts 
of our constitution." (Reid, Works, Hamilton's edition, p. 130.) 

"If asked . . . how we know that what we apprehend in sensible per- 
ception is, as consciousness assures us, an object, external, extended, and 
numerically different from the conscious subject? — how we know that 
this object is not a mere mode of mind, illusively presented to us as a 
mode of matter? — then indeed we must reply that we do not in pro- 
priety know that what we are compelled to perceive as not-self, is not a 
perception of self, and that we can only on reflection believe such to 
be the ease, in reliance on the original necessity of so believing, imposed 
on us by our nature." (Sir W. Hamilton, lb., p. 750.) According 
to these philosophers, then, the perception of an external object is 
essentially a natural and necessary belief. 



84 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

belief however potent or self-assured it may be; but 
must yet ascertain some ground for the belief in our 
possibilities of perception, or find that the belief in- 
volves, or is supported by, a genuine process of empiri- 
cal cognition. 

Object-objects, we have been saying, are knowable; 
and it should be further said that they are knowable by 
a knowledge that must be something more than a nat- 
ural or innate or necessary belief. The next step for 
us, then, is to ascertain the mode and process of this 
knowledge. In attempting this we shall here study 
brevity and confine ourselves to the more general facts ; 
reserving a somewhat more detailed treatment for the 
next chapter, in which will be considered the cognition 
of a particular object-object, namely, matter. 

First, it is to be remarked that our knowledge of 
object-objects cannot be immediate as is that of sub- 
ject-objects ; because they are not present to the mind 
as are the latter. It must be some mode of mediate 
or representative or inferential knowledge. We have 
immediate knowledge of our percepts of external ob- 
jects, since they are pure modes of mind, and there- 
fore one with and inseparable from mind ; but not of the 
objects themselves. Our knowledge of the percepts is 
immediate; that of the objects mediate. Again, in 
other words, we cannot be said to be conscious of ob- 
ject-objects as we are of subject-objects; since they do 
not come into the bright sphere of consciousness as do 
the others, but subsist in outer darkness. We may be 
conscious of an act of knowledge without being con- 
scious of the external object to which the act is relative. 
Many realists, in claiming an immediate knowledge or 
consciousness of external realities, are certainly in 
error. They mistakingly pretend to what in fact they 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 85 

do not have and what is impossible; and by so doing 
weaken the case of realism. 

If our knowledge of object-objects is wholly inferen- 
tial or mediate, the first move is to endeavor to show 
what are the media of the knowledge, i. e. f the means 
by which the object comes into relation to the subject, 
and the subject to the object and apprehends it. 

These media are not tertia quaedam, numerically 
different from both the mind and the objects, and en- 
tering between them; but are pure subject-objects, the 
pure internal sensations and percepts. By these 
media, modes of the subject itself and immediately 
known, we attain a knowledge of objects not immedi- 
ately known. By modes of consciousness, as the indis- 
pensable means or ground, we acquire a knowledge of 
things outside of consciousness. According to these 
statements, the relation of the media to the subject 
knowing obviously must be very different from their 
relation to the objects known. The media are modes 
of the subject, are immediate to it, are one with it. 
But they are quite distinct and apart from the ob- 
jects ; they can be at best only distant representations, 
to some extent copies, of the objects. They may be 
said then to stand between us and objects; but the 
conclusion cannot be rightly deduced that they hide 
objects from us, or that a true knowledge of objects, 
of objects as they are in themselves, is not possible 
through them as distant representations. Berkeley's 
reasoning against the possibility of a representative 
knowledge of external sensible things is in no wise de- 
cisive or final. 

We have been all along speaking of and postulating 
spatial outsidedness or externality. We are bound be- 
fore proceeding farther to give some account of it and 



86 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

of our assumption. The first and fundamental cogni- 
tion of spatial externality is of the externality of one 
point in an extended sensation to another, and of the 
externality of one sensation to another. This experi- 
ence of reciprocal externality within the sphere of the 
pure subjective sensibility, seems to be an indispen- 
sable condition of our cognition of the reciprocal ex- 
ternality of mind and the extra-mental. 

Our knowledge of external objects is, primitively 
and fundamentally, our inference of them as the causes 
or occasions of our sensations and percepts. But how 
does the subjective thought make the inference of the 
external cause? What excites and guides it to this 
remarkable leap? We have first, in the interaction of 
our sensitive organs, as hands and arms, and of our 
moving organs and trunk, experience of their recipro- 
cal production in themselves of sensations. One organ 
excites sensation in another, and has sensation ex- 
cited in itself by that other. When, after some ex- 
perience, though it be yet vague, of this reciprocity of 
our sensitive parts and organs, we have experience 
in one organ of such tactual and muscular sensations 
as we have felt when the organ was impressed or re- 
sisted by another organ, but have not concurrent sim- 
ilar sensations in another organ, — i. e. y when we have 
a single set of sensations and not a double, or sensations 
only on the one side, — we jump to the inference of an 
external resisting object as the cause of the sensations, 
as a cause operating like the resisting sensitive organ 
and cause we have known. We conclude in particular 
that the external resisting object is extended, from the 
extension of the sensations it excites. In such a man- 
ner as this, stated thus with much brevity and general- 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 87 

ity, we infer external objects as causes ; so we pass from 
the internal known to the external unknown. 

Accordingly, our knowledge of external objects is en- 
tirely inferential. They are never immediately known, 
they are never directly seen, they never really appear. 
The only objects immediately known, or directly seen, 
or really appearing, are subject-objects. By means of 
these latter, however, as indispensable media, we reach 
object-objects through inference alone, but through in- 
ference that is true ; we represent them as they are in 
themselves, in their most important properties and re- 
lations, namely, their real durations, spatial extensions, 
motions, interactions, successions. The general result 
therefore is a doctrine directly contrary to that of the 
Scottish school. They contend that our perception of 
external extended things is "not a deduction of rea- 
son,' ' but a natural and necessary belief. Here it is 
maintained that the perception is a deduction of reason 
or an inference, and is not a natural and necessary be- 
lief. 

It will probably contribute to distinctness, if we shall 
compare the above theory of the perception of external 
objects with what is called the " window " theory of per- 
ception and so often ridiculed by idealists. In the 
" window' ' theory, which in important elements is 
Locke's theory, the mind is thought of as an empty 
room into which outside things introduce a knowledge 
of themselves through the senses which are likened to 
windows. The mind is represented, not as productive 
and synthetic, but as passive and receptive only. 
Knowledge, as if ready-made, is presented by objects, 
and received into itself by the mind. 

The "window" hypothesis mistakes fatally in con- 



88 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

ceiving the mind as only passive and receptive in the 
knowledge of the external, and in quite overlooking its 
generative and constructive activity. All our cognitive 
states or modes referring to the external — our sensa- 
tions, percepts, images — are products of the mind itself 
and are wholly internal and mental. The mind sup- 
plies from within itself all the materials of percepts, 
and is their sole architect. External objects communi- 
cate nothing like ready-made knowledge of themselves 
to the entirely passive mind ; they impart not the least 
portion of the materials that enter into a knowledge of 
themselves. They are indeed not entirely inactive re- 
specting our knowledge of them; but their activity is 
particular and limited — it is only stimulation and a 
certain amount of regulation. They stir the mind to 
produce sensations and percepts representative of 
themselves, and exercise some control over the produc- 
tion ; but the mind yet furnishes from within itself all 
the materials of percepts, and is the sole framer of 
them. 

But though the activity of external things respecting 
our perception of them is of this simple and restricted 
character, still the importance of it must be recognized 
as being very considerable. We notice particularly the 
importance of its regulative influence upon the activity 
of the mind. In the production of inferences and rep- 
resentations of external objects, the mind does not act 
capriciously, irregularly, and arbitrarily, in total inde- 
pendence of the external objects ; but is in a degree gov- 
erned by the objects. Objects impart no cognitions or 
materials of cognitions to the mind ; these, as just said, 
are wholly produced by the mind itself; but they to an 
extent determine the mind in its productivity. For in- 
stance, the intensity, duration, and extension of sensa- 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 89 

tions and percepts are not the result entirely of the 
spontaneous, wholly independent and wayward purpose 
and action of mind; but are determined in a measure 
by the force, duration, and extension of the impressions 
made by particular objects on our sense-organs. The 
duration and extension of a sensation or percept are 
thus made like those of the impressing face of an ex- 
ternal object. Therefore while the mind is so fully 
active and productive in its perceptions of outer ob- 
jects, it is yet to this important degree passive and de- 
pendent; and while objects are so fully passive in our 
cognition of them, they are yet at the same time, to a 
significant degree, regulatively active. 

The most peculiar and remarkable fact pertaining to 
our knowledge of the external world is the involuntary 
projection into it of our sensations, percepts, subject- 
objects. So potent becomes the tendency, so com- 
pletely established the habit, even in the earliest life 
(on account to some extent probably of inherited incli- 
nation), of projecting the mental modifications or 
states, that they do not at all seem to belong to us, but 
to be distinct and remote objects or qualities of them. 
For example, colors appear to be the properties of dis- 
tant and independent objects. Sound appears to inhere 
in or to be at a distant object, as a bell. My percept 
of a tree seems to be a tree far off. Certainly, then, 
we ordinarily conceive ourselves clearly to see colored 
material objects and illuminated space, as if outside the 
mind. There are indeed outside extended objects and 
space, but we do not really see them, that is, we are not 
immediately cognizant, or conscious, of them. We only 
see, or are immediately cognizant of, our pure internal 
colored percepts which we project upon the external 
colorless realities. Our conscious percepts are thrown 



90 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

out upon the extended objects which are inferred, and 
serve as representations of them. The really internal 
and small percept, as a visual image, serves as a sign 
and representation of vastly extended external reality, 
and appears as externalized. Accordingly, knowledge, 
instead of being received into the mind from the outside 
world, is rather projected from the mind upon the out- 
side world. As a painter depicts his ideal upon the 
canvas, so the mind projects and overspreads its light 
and percepts upon the external extended world as its 
canvas or screen. 

We must not, however, fail duly to recognize the im- 
portance of the stimulation from the actual external 
extended reality in the rise of sensations and percep- 
tual material and the production and projection of per- 
cepts. If there were no external extended objects to 
occasion the production of the pure subjective percepts, 
there would be no apparent projection of percepts from 
the mind. If external realities made upon the sense 
no impressions of definite extensions, definite dura- 
tions, and definite strengths, there would not arise, as 
far as we can know, any definite percepts and any 
thought of existence outside of mind. The mind would 
not, of its pure spontaneity, produce such percepts, or 
dream of anything as external to itself. 

The greatest aberrations of idealists have relation to 
this phenomenon of projection. They suppose that the 
only objects in existence are the projected subject-ob- 
jects. When they speak of Subject and Object, they 
mean by outer object the externalized subject-object. 
According to the Hegelian idealism, as before indicated, 
the mind or thought is at first entirely subjective, or 
neither subjective nor objective. It proceeds from its 
own initiation to differentiate itself into subject and 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 91 

projected object; and then again identifies subject and 
object. There is first antithesis, which is followed by 
synthesis ; but the procedure and results are yet wholly 
within and of the unitary consciousness or thought. 
The Hegelian idealism may be described briefly, in its 
totality, as the hypothesis of the single world-thought 
developing by triadic self-evolution — evolution, wholly 
self-originated and self -continued, by thesis, antithesis, 
and synthesis. 

It is a supreme error of idealism, that the mind pro- 
jects subject-objects by its own self -originated motion. 
No doubt, projection is wholly the activity, the invol- 
untary activity, of the mind; but not of its self -initi- 
ated, or self-occasioned, or internally originated, activ- 
ity. There never would be the phenomenal projection 
of subject-objects, if there were not object-objects, real 
external and independent things, to move the mind to 
the action. Before externalization takes place and is 
possible to mind, the mind must have some knowledge, 
some inferential knowledge, of real external objects. 
This knowledge it acquires by means of the tactual and 
muscular sensations primarily, in such a manner as was 
above summarily described. The mind then first pro- 
jects sensations to particular places, because of its pre- 
vious knowledge of real external objects existing at 
those places and occasioning the sensations. If there 
were not the previous knowledge of external objects as 
causes of sensations, there would never be the projec- 
tion of sensations. 

In our external perception, there is a singular com- 
bination or fusion, so to speak, of projected subject- 
objects and object-objects — of what is in consciousness, 
with what is outside — of what we know immediately, 
with what we know only inferentially and representa- 



92 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

tively — which epistemologists have not considered. 
For example, in my cognition of a man standing near 
me on the street, there is embraced my colored and ex- 
tended percept projected npon him, and his own ex- 
tended body which is truly external to and independent 
of me. I have immediate knowledge, I am conscious, 
of the percept, for it is a pure subject-object, a pure 
mode of mind ; but I am not immediately cognizant, or 
conscious, of the body of the man. I only infer its ex- 
istence at the place whither I project my percept. I 
am conscious of the reference of my percept to the 
body, or I am conscious of my inference of the body; 
but not of the body itself. The latter I know only by 
inference and representation through the percept of 
which I am conscious. In other words, in seeing an- 
other person we have both mediate and immediate 
sight. Our vision of the person is only and altogether 
mediate sight, and the medium is our own pure visual 
percept. But of the percept itself we have immediate 
sight. The person is altogether outside our conscious- 
ness, and is not and cannot be immediately seen. He is 
seen only by representation in our conscious, or imme- 
diately known, or immediately experienced, percept. 
But the representative knowledge is genuine knowl- 
edge ; it is true to the real external and extended body. 
Not merely the bare existence of the body is known, 
but also the primary qualities of size and figure. Only 
the hardihood of idealism that hath no fear of solip- 
sism before its eyes can assert that there is no other 
object cognized than our percept, the pure subject- 
object; and that the supposed body of the man, or the 
whole man, is identical with the subject-object, is there- 
fore a pure mode of our consciousness, or has no exist- 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 93 

ence whatever as a reality outside and independently 
of our mind. 

The same statements are applicable in general to 
the cognition of any other external object. In my per- 
ception of the tree I was viewing through my window 
a moment ago, there were combined in the same single 
cognition the immediate knowledge of my green and 
extended percept and the representative knowledge of 
the extended and permanent tree which is really ex- 
ternal to and independent of me, and upon which I pro- 
jected the percept. The perception unites the con- 
sciousness of the percept and the consciousness of the 
percept as a representation of an object outside of con- 
sciousness; it unites the knowledge of what is really 
inside of mind with the knowledge of what is really 
outside; just as memory unites in the same mode of 
mind an immediate knowledge of the present and a 
representative knowledge of the past. Our eye illu- 
minates and adorns outer objects with its extended col- 
ors ; or it may be said in general that the mind, in its 
cognition of the external world, floods it with its own 
internal light, — as the head lamp of a railroad engine, 
the iron cyclops, pours its light far along the track 
in front, or as the search-light of a war-ship (to em- 
ploy again an illustration used before) illumines a 
wide expanse of sea. 

An important conclusion involved in the facts and 
principles just enunciated is, that all the materials im- 
mediately dealt with by all the sciences, both mental 
and physical, are identical, namely, the pure subject- 
objects or the pure phenomena of mind. 1 But the 

i Similar assertions are made by idealistic psychologists : "The 
phases of experience dealt with in the natural sciences and in psychology 



94 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

modes of handling the common materials are clearly 
different. Psychology treats the materials, the sub- 
ject-objects, especially as they are in themselves, or 
in their relation to the mind and their relations to one 
another. Physical science treats them in their rela- 
tion to external material objects, or as representations 
of such objects ; or, what comes to the same, it treats 
external objects as represented by the pure sub- 
jective experiences. The main concern of physical 
science is with external material objects, its proper ob- 
jects. These objects, however, are not, and cannot be, 
immediately known; they are known only mediately 
through the pure modes of the mind. Physics then, 
like psychology, deals directly only with the subjective 
modes; while its primary interest is not, like that of 
psychology, in the directly known internal experiences, 
but in the external realities mediately known through 
them. 

In correspondence with the above view, it must be 
admitted that there is a certain measure of truth in 
such general declarations of idealists as, that "the 
field of science is the contents of the mind"; for, un- 
doubtedly, the only immediate facts or contents in 
every sort of scientific thought and research are the 
pure mental percepts or experiences. But while in 
science we deal immediately only with mental con- 
tents, yet, at the same time, we deal also mediately, 

are nothing but phases of one experience regarded from different points 
of view." (Wundt, Psychology (Judd), p. 361.) 

"If it is true that all the sciences have the same sort of subject- 
matter, there can be no essential difference between the raw materials of 
physics and the raw materials of psychology." "Physics and psychology 
deal with the same stuff, the same material." (Titchener, Text-Book of 
Psychology, p. 6 and p. 8.) 

These declarations indubitably express important truth; still they 
do not by any means sustain the idealistic premise of the writers. 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 95 

through the mental contents, with realities that are not 
contained in the mind but are distinct and apart from 
it; as our fellow-men, material objects, and others. 
In the scientific treatment of matter, we handle di- 
rectly only the pure mental percept; but at the same 
time mediately, through the percept as a representa- 
tion, we truly deal with real external matter or its 
properties — its real extension, permanence, and mo- 
tion or activity. The remark has been made, that 
"when we classify plants by their resemblances, we 
classify the plants and not the impressions.' ' This is 
true; yet it must be acknowledged that the only re- 
semblances immediately known and dealt with are the 
resemblances of the impressions or percepts. The re- 
semblances of the external plants which are indeed the 
primary concern, are yet cognized only through those 
of the percepts. We may observe further upon the 
notable declaration with which Schopenhauer begins 
his principal work, and which is of similar import to 
the assertion respecting the field of science just quoted 
above, — Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung, — that this 
declaration includes and excludes the same measure 
of truth as the other. The world we immediately know 
is, doubtless, the internal world of our representations ; 
but we also mediately know, by these representations, 
an external world of extended and permanent realities. 
Schopenhauer 's saying would be much nearer the truth 
if it could be rendered, My knowledge of the world is 
my representation. 

It is necessary to recognize the existence of two 
worlds or two Natures, the internal and the external, 
the subjective and the objective. Each of these, as we 
have been postulating, is a system or cosmos, possess- 
ing its own great multitude and variety of peculiar ob- 



96 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

jects with their laws — their regular coexistences, se- 
quences, and causal connections. First, there is the 
internal world of our thoughts, feelings and volitions — 
subject-objects — with the laws of their occurrence. 
Secondly, there is the world of animate and inanimate 
realities — of extended, enduring and moving reali- 
ties — wholly outside and independent of the world 
of subject-objects, ruled by their own laws, or corre- 
lated in uniform sequences, spatial coexistences, and 
interactions. But while the objective world is wholly 
independent, in its objects and laws, of the subjective, 
it is wholly dependent upon the latter in making itself 
known. The objective, in its individuals, laws, and 
systemic oneness, is known only mediately through the 
subjective. The properties of its objects and the co- 
existences, successions, and causal connections, are 
known by like properties and relations of the sub- 
jective objects ; and known truly, known as they are in 
themselves. Without such internal representative 
properties and relations, the properties and relations 
of external realities would not be known. 1 Both sorts 
of objects are known by the same identical cognitive 
mode, the one immediately, the other mediately. Still, 
though the mind wholly of itself furnishes the materi- 
als, and all the constructive labor, in its cognition of the 
external world, it is not active only, but is to some de- 
gree passive and dependent upon the outside realities. 
The constant and habitual relations of subject-objects 
are dependent to some extent upon the uniform rela- 
tions of external objects as these impress themselves 

i In that sense, we may accept the declaration, that "in self -conscious- 
ness are implicitly contained all the categories by which science and 
philosophy attempt to make the world intelligible." (Caird, Hegel, p. 
150.) 

In that sense, but only in it, is the mind "legislative" over nature. 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 97 

upon the mind. The external objects and their rela- 
tions in no manner generate the internal ; for the mind 
generates them itself; hut they certainly influence the 
mind in the production of its representative objects 
and relations. 

These several principles, it may be briefly observed 
further and finally, are exemplified by the action of the 
mind in every science. The science of astronomy is 
indisputably a systematic construction of the human 
intellect; but, we may contend, there would not be a 
science of astronomy, if there were not a great system 
of external celestial moving realities, and if these had 
not influenced the constructive processes, and deter- 
mined the product, of the intellect. The intellect em- 
braces both the internal and external worlds simul- 
taneously, in the same science ; a result of the fact that 
both worlds are known by the same cognitions, though 
differently. The two worlds are indeed distinct; but 
they are combined by the unity of knowledge — by the 
unity of knowledge that is both immediate and medi- 
ate. The same cognitive mode is in itself both a sub- 
ject-object and the representation of an object-object. 
Hence both subject-objects and object-objects can be 
handled by the intellect in scientific thought, and are 
comprehended by it in the same science. 

We may now fitly turn to consider the specific doc- 
trines of many psychologists, that the knowledge of 
subject or self requires the knowledge of other selves ; 
and that our knowledge of external inanimate nature 
depends upon our knowledge of other persons. They 
say that we know self in knowing other people ; * and 

K "The Self of any man comes to consciousness only in contact with 
other selves." (Koyce, Psychology, p. 297.) "A vague belief in the ex- 
istence of our fellows seems to antedate, to a considerable extent, the 



98 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

know outer physical things because we know that other 
people know them. 1 Some define the subjective as that 
which is "special to me"; and the objective, as that 
which is "common to all." 

This teaching appears extravagant and unwarrant- 
able. No doubt it comes to pass that the knowledge 
of the self is always united with or involves the knowl- 
edge of other selves ; for the reason, that we are always 
closely associated in life with others. Constantly with 
us and constantly affecting us, they are constantly rec- 
ognized with our knowledge of self. But there is a 
primitive, a first, it may be only an inchoate or rudi- 
mentary, knowledge of self which precedes our knowl- 
edge of other selves and is wholly independent of it. 
This view is in agreement with important principles 
expounded above. Our knowledge of self is immedi- 
ate and it is our sole immediate knowledge; (all other 

definite formation of any consciousness of ourselves." {The World and 
the Individual, II. 170.) 

"The existence of a spirit in pure individuality apart from other spirits 
is not conceivable, for a spiritual being is one that finds itself only in 
what is other than itself." (J. Caird, Philosophy of Religion, p. 199.) 

"A self-conscious being is one which in being conscious of itself is also 
conscious of another than itself." ( Nettleship, Memoir of Green, p. 196.) 

i "The reason why we all believe that the objects of our thoughts have 
a duplicate existence outside, is that there are many human thoughts, 
each with the same objects, as we cannot help supposing. The judg- 
ment that my thought has the same object as his thought is what 
makes the psychologist call my thought cognitive of an outer reality." 
(James, Psychology, I. 271, 2.) 

"Our belief in the reality of Nature, when Nature is taken to mean 
the realm of physical phenomena known to common sense and to science, 
is inseparably bound up with our belief in the existence of our fellow- 
men." (Royce, The World and the Individual, II. 165, 6.) 

"There must be correspondence of what I believe with the beliefs of 
other men about what their senses tell them." (Haldane, Pathway to 
Reality, I. 71.) 

"That which other people become aware of when, and on the same 
grounds as I do, seems more real to me than that which they do not 
know of unless I tell them," etc. (Mill, Exam. Hamilton, I. 242.) 
What other people perceive with me, is outside me. 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 99 

realities are known only mediately). As being imme- 
diate and the only immediate knowledge, it is inde- 
pendent, first, and the indispensable condition and 
basis for the knowledge of other realities including 
other selves. Upon these just positions we should 
maintain the very opposite of the assertions of ideal- 
ists above cited : that the belief in the existence of our 
fellows antedates the consciousness of ourselves; that 
a spiritual being finds itself only in another ; that in the 
consciousness of itself there must be the consciousness 
of another. Instead of the knowledge of our fellow- 
men antedating the knowledge of ourselves, some ex- 
tent of the knowledge of ourselves must antedate, as 
being the necessary ground of, any the least knowledge 
of them. Again, it is not reasonable to suppose that 
the self must go entirely away from home in order to 
find itself. Further, to assume that we have ever as 
direct and indubitable a knowledge of others as we have 
of self is a contradiction of the truth. Idealists make 
the grave mistake of exalting what is accidental or only 
concomitant into the place of the paramount and neces- 
sary antecedent; and of giving superiority to mediate 
knowledge over immediate, or giving superiority over 
self, respecting knowledge, to what can be known only 
through the medium of self. It may be added, that the 
idealistic contention is an exhibition of a certain tend- 
ency, of which Kant is a chief exemplar; namely, the 
tendency to rob the empirical self or ego of real attri- 
butes and potentialities and to degrade it. 

The mind in cognizing itself must be taken as an ex- 
ception to the rule, that "the thing known is always 
other than the self that knows.' ' In self-knowledge 
the mind is knower and known, subject and object, in 
one, and there is not required the discrimination be- 



100 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

tween the mind and a collateral coordinate or inde- 
pendent object. The mind is a unique eye ; it sees not 
other things only, but sees also itself. Because of its 
distinctive nature, it can be its own object, or be both 
subject and object; it is a living bright reality per- 
ceiving itself in its own light. There is of course a 
species of discrimination. The mind always distin- 
guishes its permanent self from its transient affections 
or modes which are absolutely dependent upon and ab- 
solutely inseparable from itself ; and also distinguishes 
the modes from one another. There is an initial 
knowledge of self, which is possible with this peculiar 
discrimination that is wholly subjective, and requires 
not the contrasting of self with a coordinate or inde- 
pendent or outside and different object, such as an- 
other self. 

But while it seems certain that a first knowledge or a 
beginning of knowledge is possible of the mind with- 
out its discriminating itself from other minds, and 
without a known relation to them, yet it is just as cer- 
tain that soon the knowledge of self comes to be insep- 
arably associated with the knowledge of others or one 
cannot think of one 's self without thinking of one 's fel- 
lows. This results, as was above suggested, from the 
intimate relations of men and the incessant influencing 
of one by another. Though men are discrete and inde- 
pendent beings and constitute a plurality which con- 
tradicts manifestly and decisively the visionary unity 
or identity of men, or fusion of personalities, contended 
for by monists, yet they are closely related in the same 
society, nation, world-system ; and that, too, not by ac- 
cident or insignificant bonds only, but by permanent 
conditions and laws of the first importance. It neces- 
sarily follows from this constant and intimate associa- 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 101 

tion that a man's thought of himself begins before long 
invariably to involve, or to have as its concomitant, 
the thought of other men. 

Because of close and enduring consociation, men not 
only acquire the habit of invariably thinking of others 
with themselves, but they also continually and know- 
ingly affect one another in respect to all their inter- 
ests; especially by reciprocal influence they occasion 
for each other the fullest self-consciousness or self- 
knowledge. Without any knowledge of others, one 
may attain to a grade of self-knowledge ; but not to a 
large and complete self-knowledge. "As our ac- 
quaintance with other selves extends the better we 
know our own self. ' ' The presence of others, by caus- 
ing us to make comparisons of ourselves with them, 
and by their constant and varied influence upon us, is 
indispensable for our fullest self-realization. Knowl- 
edge of the ideals, beliefs, conduct, achievements, of 
our fellows necessarily promotes the development and 
education of all our faculties or of our entire inherited 
nature. In fine, we must admit the truth of the general 
declaration, that the "human can only attain to full and 
proper life in a community of minds.'' So far we 
should readily grant the claims of idealists, while 
firmly maintaining the position, that a first knowledge 
of self is possible without previous, and without simul- 
taneous and equal, knowledge of other selves. 

It deserves yet to be noted that a man's self -con- 
sciousness rises from the substance or capabilities of 
his own individual soul, and is not produced by an outer 
or another person or reality. Hence the knowledge 
of other men is not necessary, as being the only ade- 
quate means, for exciting the individual's potential- 
ities of consciousness to realization; but the impres- 



102 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

sions and characters of material realities, and of low 
animate beings, are sufficient, in themselves, to occa- 
sion a considerable advancement of the realization of 
consciousness. The disputable proposition has been 
avouched, that ' * could a child grow up with lifeless na- 
tures, there is nothing to indicate that he would become 
as self-conscious as is now a fairly educated cat." But 
it is certain that a cat, because of the inferior possibili- 
ties of its nature, never becomes more than a cat though 
domiciled within the most cultivated and consummate 
human environment; and a child, because of the su- 
perior possibilities of its nature, would not be less than 
human if it had only a feline or lifeless environment ; 
its conscious mentality would surely develop to some- 
thing much higher than that ever possessed by a cat. 

As regards the second particular doctrine spoken of 
above, it must be denied that our knowledge of ex- 
ternal realities which are not persons has a necessary 
dependence upon or association with our knowledge of 
other people; but we must yet grant that it is often 
much influenced by the latter knowledge. This influ- 
encing, however, is mostly of a confirmatory nature. 
It certainly does not give reality to physical objects, 
or contribute truth to our perceptions of them; but it 
increases and completes our assurance of the truth- 
fulness of our perceptions of the objects. We are lia- 
ble to illusions and hallucinations ; we mistake subjec- 
tive phantoms for objective realities; but when other 
people perceive the same objects we perceive we are es- 
tablished in our belief that the objects are real, that our 
perceptions are not illusory. As Mr. Spencer says: 
"What is perceived by many or all as an external ob- 
ject cannot be reasonably regarded as a subjective 
state." Though we are liable to hallucinations, yet 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 103 

our perceptions are not all likely to be hallucinations ; 
the fact is, they are very generally not so, but are true 
to realities. Accordingly, one might have a true per- 
ception of a physical object, if there were not another 
human or perceiving being on earth. "What appears 
to all exists ' ' ; but it seems certain that what appears to 
one may be as really existent as what appears to many 
or all. The hidden treasure of a miser has not less 
reality in itself and for him because it is unknown to 
others. The truth of a percept depends chiefly upon 
the individual's subjective capabilities and process of 
knowledge, not upon the fact that other persons also 
know or are known ; and while his perception of objects 
is often confirmed by the knowledge that other men 
perceive the same, it is not produced, or determined, or 
rendered genuine solely, by that knowledge. 

The doctrine that our perceptions of external things 
are necessarily dependent upon or bound up with our 
perceptions of our fellow-men appears, when duly con- 
sidered, to be but a petitio principii. It may be well 
asked, how do we come to know our fellow-men? how 
do we get possession of the presumed previous knowl- 
edge of them? The same principles and process of in- 
ferential knowledge by which we perceive other men, 
at any rate as psycho-physical organisms, are sufficient 
to secure for us an entirely independent knowledge of 
the lifeless objects of nature; they enable us easily 
and readily to acquire a knowledge of such objects with- 
out any necessary help at all from our knowledge of 
other men. In presupposing knowledge of our fel- 
lows, there is evidently included this possibility. 

Idealistic monists, in maintaining and emphasizing 
the productive and constructive activity of the mind in 



104 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

cognition, against the ' 'window' ' theory of knowl- 
edge, and against every theory of entire mental pas- 
sivity, have performed, it must be admitted, a very 
valuable service for epistemology. They exhibit and 
sustain a truth of the foremost importance in knowl- 
edge, which all schools of the science of knowledge must 
accept. They express much truth even in such ag- 
gressive assertions of theirs as the following: "All 
perception is but an unfolding of the inner mental na- 
ture '■' ; " The world of knowledge is a revelation of our 
own nature as sentient beings"; "All knowledge is 
making explicit what is implicit in mind. ' ' * These 
statements are true of the world of our immediate per- 
ception or knowledge; for our immediate knowledge, 
as was above urged, is wholly of the modes of the mind, 
of the possibilities of the mind made actual, of what is 
implicit in mind made explicit; it embraces nothing 
outside of mind. But in this there is involved no sup- 
port for the momentous idealistic assumption that the 
unf oldings or revelations of our mental nature are the 
only facts or objects of knowledge, and that there are no 
objects of knowledge and science outside and inde- 
pendent of the unf oldings of our mind, or that external 
nature, including our fellow-men, is a "constituent 
part of our consciousness"; that there is never com- 

i "What science finds in Nature is not something foreign to mind, but 
that which, as essentially rational, is a discovery to mind of its own 
latent wealth. It is not only a revelation of the world to the observ- 
ing mind, but of the observing mind to itself." (J. Caird, Philosophy 
of Religion, p. 123.) 

The sciences "are the best up-to-date account which mind can give 
of itself." (Muirhead, Ethics, p. 219.) 

"Our experience of the world is our experience of ourselves/' (E. 
Caird, Problems of Philosophy, p. 16.) 

"What is all science, if not the existence of things in you, in your 
reason ? What is all art and culture, if not your existence in the things 
to which you give measure, form and order?" ( Schleiermacher. ) 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 105 

bined with the immediate knowledge of the facts of 
mind a representative knowledge of real extra-mental 
objects. 

There is also a certain truth in such idealistic dec- 
larations of mental productivity as this : ' ' As the depth 
and intensity of the intellect increases, the limits of the 
external world extend also. . . . The mind of the sav- 
age is exactly measured by the world he has around 
him. ... In the course of history we can see the intel- 
lect growing deeper and broader, and the limits of the 
world recede simultaneously with the advance of the 
mind. ' ' 1 The external world not only expands or 
grows for us with the growth of our intellect, but even 
exists for us by means of our intellect. It exists for us 
by our intellect, certainly not because it is created by, 
but because it is known to us only by, our intellect. 
The knowledge of the external world is entirely in the 
representations made of it for us by our intellect. 
Therefore, though the external world exists altogether 
independently of us and our faculty, yet it exists for us 
by our faculty, on the principle that only that really ex- 
ists for us which is known to us. The external world 
grows for us with the growth of our intellect. The 
world of the man is vastly larger and richer than that 
of the child ; that of the savant, than that of the savage ; 
and that of the modern intellect, than that of the an- 

i Wallace, Proleg. to Hegel's Logic, 2nd ed., pp. 269, 270. 

The following are examples of the strongest utterances: 

"It is just in the effort to understand the world that the intelligence 
grows and comes into possession of itself; and, conversely, its under- 
standing of the world is conditioned by its own growth. The world 
cannot answer unless the mind question it, and the nature of the ques- 
tions is at every step determined by the stage of development which the 
mind has attained/' (E. Caird, Evolution of Religion, I. p. 11.) 

"The external world is the means by which our own nature ('or the 
divine nature') is progressively communicated to us." 

"Intelligence creates and sustains our real world." 



106 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

dent. But this is so. not because the growing intellect 
creates the growth of the external world: but because 
it produces the growth of our knowledge of the external 
world. Our intellect does not progressively create ex- 
ternal nature, but progressively cognizes it. Nature, 
in its externality and independence of the human mind, 
is precisely the same however little the savage, and 
however much the philosopher, may know of it : but the 
extent of it for each yet depends upon the development 
of his intellect, because the extent of his knowledge of 
it so depends. Further, the remarkable variety in ele- 
ments and associations and structures of the inner 
world of the intellect corresponds, as it gradually de- 
velops, to the remarkable variety, in extensions, mo- 
tions, and connections, of things in the outer world; 
but may never, in the most advanced, multifarious 
and extensive knowledge, be fully equal to the latter. 
It may then be said finally, that there is an implicit uni- 
versality in our mind, because of its capability of form- 
ing representative notions of a limitless multitude of 
external objects and of their sequences, coexistences 
and interactions. 1 

Dualistic realism has made some progress, we trust, 
since the time of Locke, and has got beyond the con- 
ception of mind as a tabula rasa, or "white paper void 
of all characters,'' or a ik dark room"; and, in general, 
beyond the " window " or scribbler theory of knowledge 
— the theory which, as was observed before, maintains 
that external objects communicate all knowledge of 
themselves to the mind, and that the mind in the recep- 
tion of the knowledge is as passive as an empty room 

i ■•Psychical causality is an inexhaustible process ever bringing forth 
new psychical products." 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT 107 

in receiving light or as a sheet of paper in receiving 
marks. 

It has become evident that the mind is not only 
passive in perception, bnt is also active ; that its activ- 
ity is far too important to be ignored or questioned; 
that it receives no knowledge of external things from 
them, but produces its knowledge of them by its own 
action; that it supplies from its own internal sources 
alone all the materials of percepts, and constructs per- 
cepts by its own unifying efficiency. But in the recog- 
nition of the generative and constructive activity of 
mind in the formation of percepts or the cognitive 
modes, there should be the most decided shunning of 
the prime aberration of the idealists in their postula- 
tion that the activity of the mind in perception is 
wholly uninfluenced by outside objects, as there are no 
outside objects to influence it; that the only objects are 
the internal percepts or subject-objects, which have no 
possible relation with real external things and can in 
no degree or manner represent them. Realism con- 
tends, on the contrary, that though the mind is to so 
considerable an extent active in perception, it is also 
to a very real extent dependent and passive; that 
while percepts, or representations of external reali- 
ties, are entirely constructed by the mind from ma- 
terials furnished by the mind itself, yet the construc- 
tion is initiated and controlled by the influence of the 
realities; that percepts represent objects of particu- 
lar shapes, sizes, times, motions, forces, not of its own 
arbitrary purpose and perfectly self-originated and 
independent activity, but because real outer objects 
possessing these particular qualities influence the mind 
by them in the formation of the percepts. Thus it is 



108 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

held that while the mind is so largely active in know- 
ing external objects, the objects also are active upon 
the mind in being known. 

Again, realism has come to see itself under the ne- 
cessity of admitting that it is not a satisfactory and 
sufficient theory and proof of the existence of extra- 
mental objects, to claim a belief in the existence of 
such objects that is natural and necessary, that will 
not permit the negation of itself, that cannot be ex- 
pelled. This proof is conceived to be in itself inade- 
quate, and has been abandoned by many. But cer- 
tainly an irresistible belief in external objects uni- 
versally exists, and is a very remarkable fact. Ideal- 
ists are compelled to consider it; but their attempts 
to account for it have been ignominious failures. The 
belief always demands capabilities and processes of 
knowledge which they do not recognize. Eealists 
however feel that they cannot stop with an appeal to 
this belief, certain and potent as it is; but are under 
obligation to go on and give some account of the rise, 
development and worth of the belief; or to show, in 
the character and processes of our senses and the or- 
dinary operations of our intellect, the possibility of 
apprehending, or forming true and binding inferences 
and representations of, external realities. 



CHAPTER III 

THE NATURE AND OUR PERCEPTION OF MATTER 

In the preceding chapter we have given some consid- 
eration to Object-Objects in general; now we come to 
treat of a particular Object-Object, that is, Matter. 
According to the more common understanding, matter 
is an extended, inanimate, inert and permanent reality 
entirely independent of onr mind or thought. 

The scientific discussions of the nature of matter 
have long had particular regard to the questions of the 
divisibility of matter and the character and relation 
of its ultimate elements. Metaphysicians have ar- 
dently debated whether matter is infinitely divisible 
or whether there is a limit to division. They have 
agreed that though both alternatives are inconceiva- 
ble, yet one of them must be true. 

We are perfectly familiar with the divisibility of 
the tangible material objects that we constantly en- 
counter, as pieces of wood, lumps of earth, stone. We 
may break a stone into pieces, and then break any one 
of these pieces into smaller, and so on, until we can 
divide no farther or not into perceivable fragments. 
When partition ceases to be practicable, we may carry 
it on many stages mentally and by aid of mathematical 
symbols. The ideal division of matter is related to 
what is called the "theoretical construction ' ' of mat- 
ter. It is common to postulate the ideal division as 
continued down to very minute particles called atoms. 

109 



110 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

These are conceived to be separated from one another 
by empty spaces, and to be held in equilibrium (even 
with changing collocation) by their inherent attractive 
and repulsive forces. By elements so related, it is 
supposed, are constituted the tangible masses, the or- 
dinary material objects, we meet with. The objects 
seem to us to be perfectly continuous and solid because 
our senses are not acute enough to discriminate the 
constituent elements and the void spaces that separate 
them. 

What the substance or nature is of the so called 
atoms, or of the conjectured atoms of atoms, is a 
subject concerning which physicists confess the great- 
est uncertainty. It is generally believed to be impos- 
sible to tell whether they are electrical, or ethereal, 
or of some other character; but future research may 
solve the mystery. It is strange to be compelled to 
admit that objects, which seem so well known and so 
real, are thus as to their constituents unknown. 

Respecting the question whether matter is infinitely 
divisible, whether the atoms themselves are divisible 
into subordinate atoms, and these again divisible into 
fragments, and so on, some metaphysicians seem to 
hold that, as we can think, or speak understandingly, 
of the infinite divisibility of matter, therefore it must 
be possible, or it could be effected if a sufficient force 
could be applied. This would seem to involve the 
possibility of dividing matter to nothingness, or to 
unextended elements. Something similar to this 
wholly unfounded and perverse presumption of a real 
divisibility corresponding to a divisibility verbally 
predicable, metaphysicians have endeavored to main- 
tain respecting space. It seems unreasonable to sup- 
pose that the last elements of matter are unextended; 



NATUEE OF MATTER 111 

because of the manifest impossibility of unextended 
elements constituting the extended objects we certainly 
know. Any number of unextended units cannot make 
up an extended thing. 

The theory has been deliberately propounded that 
the ultimate units of matter are unextended, or but 
punctual, centres of force — of pure force free from 
any substance or substratum. But the impossibility 
of any multitude of such unextended centres compos- 
ing any of the masses of matter which we are con- 
stantly and clearly perceiving, is fatal to the theory. 
The theory is entitled to consideration only upon the 
supposition that the conjectural centres of force are 
separated from one another by real void spaces, and 
are maintained in equilibrium by their mutual attrac- 
tions and repulsions. According to this view, a piece 
of matter is a multitudinous group of centres of force 
severed from one another, and firmly balanced, in real 
space, and thus as a group possessing real and per- 
ceivable extension and offering resistance. 

The ideal division of matter into infinitesimal, ab- 
solutely imperceivable particles, has led to some scep- 
tical surmisings and assumptions as to the reality 
and cognizability of any sort or form of matter. Some 
have doubted and denied the reality of atoms, declar- 
ing them to be only ideal. 1 Some have been led by 

1 "These supposed actualities [mass-points, atoms], behind what can 
possibly be seen or felt, are not only not absolute realities, they are 
not even phenomenal realities; they are simply conceptions which the 
physicist has reached by idealizing what he can see and feel; . . . 
thoughts not things, ideas existing solely for the minds of physicists." 
(Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, II. 102.) 

"Natural science considers the world as a mechanism, and for that 
purpose transforms the reality in a most complicated and ingenious 
way. It puts in the place of the perceivable objects unperceivable 
atoms which are merely products of mathematical construction quite 
unlike any known thing." ( Miinsterberg, Psychology and Life, p. 20.) 



112 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

the conceptual divisibility of tangible masses, the 
masses with which division is supposed to begin, to 
doubt and deny the reality of the masses themselves; 
and to consider them as wholly ideal, or as only ap- 
pearances, or as things that vanish by partition. It 
has been said that matter is entirely "unknowable,' ' 
that "matter however conceived by us cannot be mat- 
ter as it actually is. ' ' 1 An eminent physicist has as- 
serted that "we do not know and are probably incapa- 
ble of discovering what matter is." 

Atoms may be held to be real, and not only ideal, 
because they are attained by a division of tangible 
and perceivable masses. They are reached by the 
mental continuation of a division which may be actu- 
ally carried to a distance unto fragments that are per- 
ceivable. We come to them by a justifiable process of 
inference from real and definitely knowable masses. 
Then, though they are ideal, they are in this wise also 
real. 

The declarations, that we know not what matter is, 
that it is quite incognizable, that matter as conceived 
by us cannot be matter as it exists, and the like, are 
far too sweeping and indiscriminating. It must be 
conceded at once that we know not the ultimate con- 
stituents of matter, whether they are electrical cor- 
puscles, whirls of ether, or something else; in respect 
to these, matter is certainly unknown. But matter as 
composed of the conjectural constituents, that is, the 
common material objects of our perception, — sticks of 
wood, stone, rods and balls of metal, — are indisputably 
known as to their extension, extension including figure 
and magnitude. The material object, entirely un- 
known as respects its ultimate elements and structure, 

i Spencer, First Principles, p. 94. 



NATUEE OF MATTER 113 

is yet clearly and certainly known as respects the form 
and size of its mass. 

The object may be compounded of elements whose 
distances from one another are very many times longer 
than the diameter of the elements themselves; but the 
distances are yet very short for us, being undiscernible 
by our sharpest sensibility. As consisting of a collec- 
tion of such severed, but for us very close, elements, 
held strongly in equipoise, the object has real exten- 
sion, real stable figure and size, which are known by 
us as they are. To this extent matter is truly knowa- 
ble, is represented by us as it exists. In such a manner 
we would contend for the duty of holding on to the 
knowableness and reality of the ordinary material ob- 
jects of our perceptions, against every mode of the 
"theoretical construction" of matter that denies or is 
inclined to deny these facts. We must not allow our- 
selves to be beguiled out of them by any sort of meta- 
physical sophistication. The ideal construction of the 
interior of matter, so to speak, must always maintain 
itself in consistency with matter as we perceive it in 
its extension or in its shape and magnitude. The ex- 
tended perceivable objects carry in themselves, in their 
own being, the decisive proof that their ultimate con- 
stituents cannot be unextended. Finally, it should be 
remarked and accentuated that the knowledge of the 
figure and magnitude of material objects is not an in- 
significant knowledge, but forms a very large and im- 
portant part of all the knowledge of matter contended 
for by any sect of metaphysicians. 

These considerations bring us directly to the supreme 
question, How do we come to know especially the ex- 
tension of material realities? Let us then, dismissing 



114 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

now every other question, proceed to wrestle with this 
paramount problem. It is proposed to treat this great 
problem of cognition with particular reference to the 
Berkeleian immaterialism. This mode of procedure 
seems advisable, because the great influence of Berkeley 
upon present-day idealism and monism is unmistaka- 
ble. The strongest argumentation in our time against 
the matter of dualistic or natural realism is largely 
drawn from Berkeley. We meet in current idealistic 
literature frequent echoes of Berkeley such as these: 
"All matter is given to us only as idea in our conscious- 
ness" — "To talk about knowing the external world 
through ideas which are merely within us, is to talk 
of an inherent self-contradiction" — "A world external 
to and independent of the mind would for us be for- 
ever inaccessible" — "It would be impossible to com- 
pare the internal idea with the external object." 

But, first, since the theory of Berkeley took its start 
from Locke's philosophy of the reality and cogniza- 
bility of external bodies, and was developed in opposi- 
tion to its main tenets, brief preliminary attention to 
the doctrine of Locke will furnish important help to 
the understanding of the teaching of Berkeley, will get 
valuable light upon its course and conclusions. 

Locke was a dualistic realist of the Cartesian type, 
holding to matter as an extended substance distinct 
from and independent of the substance of mind. As 
to knowledge, and first as to knowledge in general, he 
maintained that the only objects of immediate knowl- 
edge are our ideas; that of matter and all external 
things our knowledge is only inferential or mediate. 
The media of the knowledge of external realities are 
our immediately or intuitively known ideas. He says : 
"The mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath 



PEECEPTION OF MATTER 115 

no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it 
alone does or can contemplate ' ' (Essay, IV. i. 1) ; and 
then, as involved in this fundamental principle, he drew 
the primary conclusion, that we can know external 
things only by the "intervention" of the ideas we have 
of them (IV. iv. 3). He says again emphatically, that 
a man has "no notion of anything without him, but 
by the idea he has of it in his mind" (II. xxxii. 25). 

Ideas lead to a knowledge of external things by their 
intervention, or by serving as media, in two respects 
mainly: first, as being effects of external objects, and, 
secondly, because of their conformity or agreement with 
external objects; or, in other words, first, on account 
of the causal relation between them and objects, and, 
secondly, on account of the conformity between them 
and objects. 

As to the causation of ideas, Locke distinguishes and 
compares the ideas that are produced in the mind by 
the mind's own volition, as, for example in many in- 
stances, memories and images, and the ideas that are 
not produced by volition, but are forced into the mind 
"whether we will or no," as sensations. He remarks 
upon this important difference : ' ' There can be noth- 
ing more certain than that the idea we receive from an 
external object is in our minds : this is intuitive knowl- 
edge. But whether there be anything more than barely 
that idea in our minds, whether we can thence certainly 
infer the existence of anything without us which cor- 
responds to that idea, is that whereof some men think 
there may be a question made ; because men may have 
such ideas in their minds when no such thing exists, 
no such object affects their senses. But yet here I 
think we are provided with an evidence that puts us 
past doubting: for I ask any one, whether he be not 



116 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

invincibly conscious to himself of a different percep- 
tion when he looks on the sun by day, and thinks on it 
by night ; when he actually tastes wormwood, or smells 
a rose, or only thinks on that savour or odour! We 
as plainly find the difference there is between an idea 
revived in our minds by our memory, and [an idea] 
actually coming into our minds by our senses, as we do 
between any two distinct ideas' 9 (IV. ii. 14). He re- 
marks again : ' ' There is a manifest difference between 
the ideas laid up in my memory . . . and those which 
force themselves upon me, and I cannot avoid having. 
And therefore it must needs be some exterior cause, 
and the brisk acting of some objects without me, whose 
efficacy I cannot resist, that produces those ideas in 
my mind, whether I will orno" (IV. xi. 5). 

Here Locke obviously teaches that we infer the ex- 
istence of external objects from the ideas they produce 
in the mind. The mind produces some of its ideas by 
its own volition, and knows itself as a cause ; when ideas 
come to it without its own agency it is impelled by 
them to infer outside causes. In his own words, we 
have a knowledge "of the existence of particular ex- 
ternal objects by that perception and consciousness we 
have of the actual entrance of ideas from them." So 
much for the cognition of outer things by the interven- 
tion of ideas as effects. 

We go on to consider Locke's doctrine of the cogni- 
tion of external objects through the conformity of 
ideas to the objects, or through the intervention of 
ideas which as effects have a particular conformity 
or agreement with the objects or with their qualities. 
As to the conformity or agreement of ideas with ex- 
ternal things or their qualities, Locke asserts first, that 
there are "two sorts of ideas that we may be assured 



PEECEPTION OF MATTER 117 

agree with things/ ' He means our ideas of the pri- 
mary, and our ideas of the secondary, qualities of 
things. He holds further that there are not only two 
sorts of ideas that agree with things, but that there are 
also two sorts of agreement of ideas with things. 
First, the ideas of the primary qualities of bodies, 
namely, of their extension, solidity, figure, motion, 
agree with them by a distinct and peculiar mode of con- 
formity; that is, the ideas are resemblances of the ex- 
ternal qualities, or represent them to us as they really 
exist. Secondly, the ideas of the secondary qualities 
of external things, namely, our sensations of color, 
sound, odor, are conformed to the external qualities, 
but also by a distinct and special mode of conformity. 
It should be remarked that colors, sounds, odors, etc., 
which are mistakingly supposed to be properties of 
external things, are, however, Locke is careful defi- 
nitely to aver, entirely within us, are our sensations. 
The only real secondary qualities of external bodies are 
the " operations " or " motions' ' of their minute or in- 
sensible particles, which excite in the mind the subjec- 
tive secondary qualities. But the subjective secondary 
qualities, the colors, sounds, have their specific type 
of conformity to the external secondary. They con- 
form to them not as resemblances, or true representa- 
tions, but merely as having a regular or constant con- 
nection with them, or as being constant effects but quite 
unlike them. Locke explicitly says: "The ideas of 
primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, 
and their patterns do really exist in the bodies them- 
selves ; but the ideas produced in us by these secondary 
qualities have no resemblance of them at all. There is 
nothing like our ideas existing in the bodies them- 
selves' ' (II. viii. 15). It deserves to be noticed here 



118 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

that how external objects "produce" or " excite' ' in 
us ideas, either those that resemble, or those that do 
not resemble, qualities of the objects, is said by Locke 
to be wholly incomprehensible by us. He rests with 
the general declaration, that the production results 
from the will and power of God. 

The weakest part of Locke's theory of external per- 
ception is his exposition of the alleged conformity of 
some of our ideas, by resemblance, to the primary quali- 
ties of bodies. This principle he never explained or 
established. He never gave a sufficient reason for as- 
serting or conjecturing such a mode of conformity. 
He even maintained a principle that would appear to 
render resemblance of internal idea to external quality 
impossible. For he seems to have given full assent to 
the Cartesian view, that matter is extended, and mind 
or thought is not extended. The most important ques- 
tion then for him to answer respecting perception by 
resemblance was, How can an unextended thought or 
idea copy or truly represent external extension? Ap- 
parently the only answer that could be given was, it is 
impossible. 

This very important inquiry did not escape the per- 
spicacity of Locke, as is evident from the following re- 
marks of his on a statement of P. Malebranche : ' - The 
reason that he gives why material things cannot be 
united to our souls after a manner that is necessary to 
the soul's perceiving them, is this, viz., 'That material 
things being extended, and the soul not, there is no 
proportion between them. ' This, if it shows anything, 
shows only that a soul and a body cannot be united, 
because one has surface to be united by, and the other 
none." (Exam. P. Malebranche' 's Opinion, sect. 5.) 
He says again: "I shall here only take notice how 



PERCEPTION OF MATTER 119 

inconceivable it is to me, that a spiritual, i. e., an un- 
extended, substance should represent to the mind an 
extended figure. . . . Next, supposing I could conceive 
an unextended substance to represent a figure, or be 
the idea of a [an external] figure, the difficulty still re- 
mains to conceive how it is my soul sees it" (18). And 
again: " Impressions made on the retina by rays of 
light, I think I understand; and motions from thence 
continued to the brain may be conceived, and that these 
produce ideas in our minds, I am persuaded, but in a 
manner to me incomprehensible. This I can resolve 
only into the good pleasure of God, whose ways are 
past finding out" (10). It is therefore clear that 
Locke had before his mind the central problem, How 
can an unextended idea represent an external extended 
thing? For his part he postulated such representa- 
tion; but treated it as a miracle or mystery to be re- 
ferred to the agency of God. 

The very superior principle of his doctrine of ex- 
ternal perception, namely, the assumed conformity by 
resemblance of the internal idea to the external exten- 
sion and figure, is thus left altogether without support, 
indeed without any sufficient occasion for surmising it. 
Locke's views, that we have immediate knowledge of 
ideas, but no immediate knowledge of things outside 
the mind, and that we can know outside things only by 
the "intervention" or "mediation" of ideas, or by 
conformity of ideas to the things, may be true enough ; 
but his total failure to demonstrate the actuality or 
possibility of intervention and of conformity espe- 
cially by resemblance, further than simply ascribing 
it to the good pleasure and unsearchable ways of God, 
left a fundamental principle of his theory of the cogni- 
tion of the external entirely unsustained and entirely 



120 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

incapable of withstanding assaults such as those of the 
Berkeleian immaterialism. 

Berkeley, to whom we now turn, fully accepts, in his 
theory of knowledge and of existence, Locke's prin- 
ciple, that we have immediate knowledge of ideas, but 
not of any sort of objects external to the mind. Says 
Philonous in the Third Dialogue: "The things im- 
mediately perceived are ideas which exist only in the 
mind. ' ' But though thus starting with a primary prin- 
ciple of Locke, he soon abruptly departed from his 
philosophy, especially from his theory of the cognition 
and existence of material objects, and thenceforth an- 
tagonized it with all his power. Locke held, as was 
noted above, that though we have no immediate knowl- 
edge of material objects, we have yet mediate knowl- 
edge of them, by means of ideas as effects that the 
objects produce in the mind, and also by means of the 
correspondence of ideas to the objects, particularly 
their resemblance to the primary qualities of the ob- 
jects. In emphatic opposition to this view, Berkeley 
holds that material substance, as commonly under- 
stood, could not cause ideas in our mind; again, that 
ideas could not resemble the primary qualities of ma- 
terial substance; and, further, that granting that the 
supposed external material substance existed, and 
granting also even that our ideas resembled its primary 
qualities, yet the fact of that resemblance could never 
be known by us. He then draws the momentous con- 
clusion that material substance does not exist and is 
impossible. 

1. Against Locke's view that material objects pro- 
duce or excite ideas in the mind, Berkeley argues that 
material objects, taken according to the usual definition, 
as "passive," "inert," "senseless," "unthinking," 



PERCEPTION OF MATTER 121 

"unperceiving" things without the mind, could not be 
the supporters of ideas and could not cause ideas in 
the mind, or imprint or introduce them; and contends 
that only an active being, a spirit, a spirit as possessing 
especially volition, can be the cause or imparter of 
ideas. He allows that from ideas as effects we can 
infer a spirit as a cause, but never material substance. 
"How," Philonous asks (Second Dialogue), "can that 
which is inactive be a cause ; or that which is unthink- 
ing be a cause of thought!" Again: "How can any 
idea or sensation exist in, or be produced by, anything 
but a mind or spirit! This indeed is inconceivable." 
He says further (Third Dial.): "That a being en- 
dowed with knowledge and will should produce or ex- 
hibit ideas, is easily understood. But that a being 
which is utterly destitute of these faculties should be 
able to produce ideas, or in any sort to affect an in- 
telligence, this I can never understand." He then 
firmly asserts (Principles, lxxiii) "that we have no 
longer any reason to suppose the being of matter ; nay, 
that it is utterly impossible there should be any such 
thing, so long as that word is taken to denote an un- 
thinking substratum of qualities or accidents wherein 
they exist without the mind." Again he says (vii) : 
' ' To have an idea is all one as to perceive ; that there- 
fore wherein colour, figure and the like qualities exist, 
must perceive them; hence it is clear there can be no 
unthinking substance or substratum of those ideas. 
Further of the objective existence of matter Philonous 
affirms (Third Dial.) : "The question between the ma- 
terialists and me is not whether things have a real ex- 
istence out of the mind of this or that person, but 
whether they have an absolute existence distinct from 
being perceived by God, and exterior to all minds." 



122 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

He makes also the interesting remark (Prin., xxxv) : 
' ' The only thing whose existence we deny, is that which 
philosophers call matter or corporeal substance. And 
in doing of this, there is no damage done to the rest 
of mankind, who, I dare say, will never miss it." 

Berkeley's reasoning against the possibility of ideas 
existing in or being produced by material objects pro- 
ceeds upon two significant assumptions, one of which 
regards the nature of ideas, and the other the nature 
of matter. With these assumptions his argument is 
made the more plausible. First, as to the nature of 
ideas, he supposes that ideas are not modes, modifica- 
tions, attributes, of mind, but are realities distinct from 
mind. Though he says that ideas cannot exist exterior 
to and independently of mind, that their existence con- 
sists in being perceived, that esse is percipi, yet he 
plainly declares that they are quite distinct and differ- 
ent from mind. Spirits and ideas, he maintains, are 
two kinds of being that "are entirely distinct and 
heterogeneous" (Prin., lxxxiv). He treats ideas as 
if they can pass or be conveyed from one mind to 
another or be introduced and exhibited by one mind 
to another, can at different times be the possession of 
different minds. "When I deny sensible things an ex- 
istence out of the mind," says Philonous in the Third 
Dial., "I do not mean my mind in particular, but all 
minds. Now it is plain they have an existence ex- 
terior to my mind, since I find them by experience to 
be independent of it. There is therefore some other 
mind wherein they exist during the intervals between 
the times of my perceiving them; as likewise they did 
before my birth, and would do after my supposed an- 
nihilation." If ideas are to be thus regarded as in- 
separable from mind, and yet also entirely distinct 



PERCEPTION OF MATTER 123 

from mind and of a heterogeneous nature, then it is 
indeed difficult to understand how they can exist in 
unthinking material substance and be produced by it in 
minds or in any wise imparted. But it is quite another 
case, and favors quite a different conclusion from 
Berkeley's, if ideas are to be regarded not as per- 
manent realities distinct from mind, but as the mind's 
transient modes, which so long as they exist are al- 
ways and entirely inseparable from mind. This theory 
of the relation of ideas to mind does not forbid the 
possibility of material objects occasioning ideas in the 
mind, and is not open to the strictures of Berkeley. 

Respecting the nature of matter, Berkeley thought 
the current view made matter entirely inert. If that 
were really maintained to be the true character of 
matter, then his theory that matter of such a character 
could not contain ideas or cause or produce ideas in a 
mind, would be indisputable. But science has long 
taught that, though masses of matter may be said to 
be inert, yet all are seats of swift activities, of notable 
molecular forces and motions. This view makes possi- 
ble a contrary conclusion from Berkeley's. Material 
things as being, though senseless and unthinking, yet 
not without activities within, may be supposed capa- 
ble, by these motions of their particles, and also by 
molar motions, to excite directly and indirectly the 
mind to produce of itself ideas, that is to say, its own 
peculiar and inseparable modes. It is therefore ob- 
vious that Berkeley's erroneous doctrine of the on- 
tological severance of ideas from mind, and his mis- 
taken conception of the teaching of the " philosophers " 
respecting the activities of matter, very greatly reduce 
the cogency of his reasoning regarding the rise of 
ideas and the incapability of matter to cause them. 



124 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

2. Berkeley again contends vigorously against 
Locke's doctrine that ideas resemble the qualities of 
material substance. He holds that an idea may re- 
semble another idea, and one spirit resemble another 
spirit; but that idea or spirit can in no wise resemble 
a material object. On this point he remarks: "But 
say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist with- 
out the mind, yet there may be things like them whereof 
they are copies or resemblances, which things exist 
without the mind in an unthinking substance. I an- 
swer, an idea can be like nothing but an idea ; a colour 
or figure can be like nothing but another colour or 
figure. If we look but ever so little into our thoughts, 
we shall find it impossible for us to conceive a likeness 
except only between our ideas. Again, I ask whether 
those supposed originals or external things, of which 
our ideas are the pictures or representations, be them- 
selves perceivable or no? if they are, then they are 
ideas, and we have gained our point; but if you say 
they are not, I appeal to any one whether it be sense 
to assert a colour is like something which is invisible; 
hard or soft, like something which is intangible; and 
so of the rest." (Prin. } viii.) Again: "It is evi- 
dent . . . that extension, figure, and motion are only 
ideas existing in the mind, and that an idea can be like 
nothing but another idea" (ix). Further: "The 
very being of an idea implies passiveness and inert- 
ness in it, insomuch that it is impossible for an idea 
to do anything, or, strictly speaking, to be the cause of 
anything ; neither can it be the resemblance or pattern 
of any active being" (xxv). 

3. A third, and much stronger, argument of Berkeley 
against the Lockian theory of the perception and re- 
ality of external matter runs thus: Granting for the 



PERCEPTION OF MATTER 125 

moment that the supposed external matter exists, and 
granting even that our ideas resemble it or its quali- 
ties, yet the fact of the resemblance could not at all be 
known by us. For to cognize the resemblance we must 
be able to compare ideas with external objects; but to 
compare an idea with an unknown external object is 
impossible. He observes: "So long as men thought 
that real things subsisted without the mind, and that 
their knowledge was only so far forth real as it was 
conformable to real things, it follows, that they could 
not be certain that they had any real knowledge at all. 
For how can it be known, that the things which are 
perceived are conformable to those which are not per- 
ceived, or exist without the mind." (Prin., lxxxvi.) 
Says Philonous in the Third Dial.: "It is your opin- 
ion the ideas we perceive by our senses are not real 
things, but images or copies of them. Our knowledge 
therefore is no further real, than as our ideas are the 
true representations of those originals. But as these 
supposed originals are in themselves unknown, it is 
impossible to know how far our ideas resemble them; 
or whether they resemble them at all. We cannot 
therefore be sure we have any real knowledge.' ' 1 

This is Berkeley's most forcible argument against 
the knowableness and existence of material substance ; 
and it is confidently held to this day by idealists gener- 
ally to admit of no reply. It must be granted that in 
any real refutation of Berkeley the argument must be 
squarely met and answered. We may observe in pass- 
ing that the thought is not original to Berkeley. It 

1 Hume thus repeats Berkeley's deduction : "The mind has never any- 
thing present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any 
experience of their connection with objects. The supposition of such a 
connection is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning." {Works, 
IV. p. 174.) 



126 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

had suggested itself to Locke, as is obvious from the 
following query: "How shall the mind, when it per- 
ceives nothing but its ideas, know that they agree with 
things themselves f ' ' (Essay, IV. iv. 3.) Locke how- 
ever holds, as was above noted, that we do know the 
agreement. Berkeley in direct opposition contends that 
we could never know it. 

To this reasoning against the possibility of a knowl- 
edge of material objects by means of the resemblance 
of our ideas to the objects, Berkeley adds the follow- 
ing against a knowledge of the external objects by 
means of their causal relation to our ideas : " I do not 
see what reason can induce us to believe the existence 
of bodies without the mind, from what we perceive, 
since the very patrons of matter themselves do not 
pretend there is any necessary connection betwixt them 
and our ideas. I say, it is granted on all hands (and 
what happens in dreams, frenzies, and the like, puts 
it beyond dispute) that it is possible we might be af- 
fected with all the ideas we have now, though no bodies 
existed without resembling them. Hence it is evident 
the supposition of external bodies is not necessary for 
the producing our ideas; since it is granted they are 
produced sometimes, and might possibly be produced 
always, in the same order we see them in at present, 
without their concurrence. ' ' (Prin., xviii.) 

4. A very important part of Berkeley's argumenta- 
tion in opposition to the cognizability and reality of 
external matter is his contention that the so-called 
primary and indispensable qualities of the supposed 
matter are really mental or are really in the mind, and 
not at all outside of mind ; that to hold that extension, 
figure and magnitude, are exterior to mind is an en- 
tirely false localization. He reasons in this wise: 



PERCEPTION OF MATTER 127 

All admit that the secondary qualities, sounds, colors, 
etc., exist in the mind alone. Now the primary quali- 
ties, extension, figure, are from the first so closely 
united with the secondary qualities that they cannot be 
severed from them even in thought. Hence, if the 
secondary qualities are in the mind, so must be the pri- 
mary. The fact of mental extension, the extension of 
sensations, then, he regards as complete proof against 
the hypothesis of extra-mental extension. He supposes 
that in his recognition of the subjective extension he 
scores decisively against the " patrons of matter/ ' 
They are left nothing to stand on. Every material 
quality has been drawn into, or shown to exist in, the 
mind. None of them is outside ; and matter is an im- 
possible substratum. "They who assert," says Berke- 
ley, "that figure, motion and the rest of the primary 
or original qualities, do exist without the mind, in un- 
thinking substances, do at the same time acknowledge 
that colours, sounds, heat, cold, and such like secondary 
qualities, do not, which they tell us are sensations ex- 
isting in the mind alone, that depend on and are occa- 
sioned by the different size, texture, and motion of the 
minute particles of matter. This they take for an un- 
doubted truth, which they can demonstrate beyond all 
exception. Now if it be certain that those original 
[the primary] qualities are inseparably united with the 
other sensible qualities, and not, even in thought, capa- 
ble of being abstracted from them, it plainly follows 
that they exist only in the mind. . . . For my own part 
I see evidently that it is not in my power to frame an 
idea of a body extended and moved, but I must withal 
give it some colour or other sensible quality which is 
acknowledged to exist only in the mind. In short, ex- 
tension, figure, and motion, abstracted from all other 



128 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

qualities are inconceivable. Where therefore the other 
sensible qualities are, there must these be also, to wit, 
in the mind and nowhere else." (Prin., x.) He as- 
serts also: "It is evident . . . that extension, figure, 
and motion, are only ideas existing in the mind, and 
that an idea can be like nothing but another idea, and 
that consequently neither they nor their archetypes 
can exist in an unperceiving substance. Hence it is 
plain that the very notion of what is called matter, or 
corporeal substance, involves a contradiction in it" 
(ix). And again: "All (place or) extension exists 
only in the mind" (lxvii). He says in the New 
Theory of Vision, sect, xliii: "I appeal to any man's 
experience, whether the visible extension of any object 
doth not appear as near to him, as the colour of that 
object ; nay, whether they do not both seem to be in the 
very same place. Is not the extension we see coloured, 
and is it possible for us, so much as in thought, to 
separate and abstract colour from extension? Now 
where the extension is, there surely is the figure, and 
there the motion too. ' ' x 

To a certain length Berkeley's reasoning regarding 

i Hume thus restates Berkeley's doctrine of the subjectivity of spatial 
extension: "It is universally allowed by modern inquirers, that all the 
sensible qualities of objects, such as hard, soft, hot, cold, white, black, 
etc., are merely secondary, and exist not in the objects themselves, but 
are perceptions of the mind, without any external archetype or model 
which they represent. If this be allowed with regard to secondary 
qualities, it must also follow with regard to the supposed primary 
qualities of extension and solidity; nor can the latter be any more 
entitled to that denomination than the former. The idea of extension 
is entirely acquired from the senses of sight and feeling; and if all 
the qualities, perceived by the senses, be in the mind, not in the object, 
the same conclusion must reach the idea of extension, which is wholly 
dependent on the sensible ideas, or the ideas of secondary qualities. . . . 
Extension that is neither tangible nor visible cannot possibly be con- 
ceived." Hume yet adds the striking remark, in speaking of Berkeley's 
sceptical arguments in general: "They admit of no answer, and pro- 
duce no conviction." (Works, IV. pp. 175, 176.) 



PERCEPTION OF MATTER 129 

the reality of mental or internal extension is cogent; 
his conclusion is sustained by many respectable psy- 
chologists and by indisputable facts. The primary 
quality of extension is as certainly in the mind as the 
secondary qualities of color and sound. Our sensa- 
tions and percepts as really possess extension as an 
attribute, as they possess color. Extension and color 
in fact are inseparably bound together as the proper- 
ties of the same unitary sensation. But in one im- 
portant respect Berkeley pushes his reasoning in this 
instance to an illogical extreme. To prove that exten- 
sion is in the mind as a property of sensations and 
percepts, does not prove, what he assumes it does, 
namely, that extension cannot be also a quality of 
things outside the mind. To demonstrate that exten- 
sion and figure are in the mind, does not demonstrate 
that they are "in the mind alone' ' or "nowhere else." 

This conception of Berkeley, that extension is a 
property of sensations or ideas, was a very notable 
move in one respect beyond the doctrine that prevailed 
in his day, the doctrine of Descartes and Locke, namely, 
that matter is extended, but thoughts, ideas, percepts, 
are unextended. And it may be added that, though di- 
rectly contrary to all Berkeley himself meditated and 
designed and expected, it constitutes one of the most 
considerable advances ever made in the development 
of the philosophy of external perception. 

But it must be acknowledged that Berkeley's theory 
of mental extension is far from being complete, ma- 
ture and self-consistent. He promulgated opinions 
that seem irreconcilable with it. For instance, he 
plainly asserts that the mind is unextended. Philonous 
says in the Third Dialogue: "The mind, spirit, or 
soul, is that indivisible, unextended thing, which thinks, 



130 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

acts and perceives. I say indivisible because unex- 
tended; and unextended, because extended, figured, 
moveable things are ideas.' ' This inevitably raises 
the grave question, How can an unextended mind con- 
tain extended, figured, moveable things or ideas, or how 
can extended ideas find place in an unextended mind? 
Further on in the same Dialogue the antagonist Hylas 
directly presses this same question, as follows: " Ex- 
plain to me now, O Philonous ! how it is possible there 
should be room for all those trees and houses to exist 
in your mind. Can extended things be contained in 
that which is unextended V ' Philonous replies: 
"When I speak of objects as existing in the mind or 
imprinted on the senses, I would not be understood in 
the gross literal sense, as when bodies are said to 
exist in a place, or a seal to make an impression upon 
wax. My meaning is only that the mind comprehends 
or perceives them ; and that it is affected from without, 
or by some being distinct from itself." But the reply 
is certainly very inadequate and unsatisfactory. 

Again, in his discussion of extension in the mind, 
Berkeley propounds the peculiar distinction of exten- 
sion as idea and extension as attribute. Speaking of 
the primary qualities of extension and figure, he says : 
"Those qualities are in the mind only as they are per- 
ceived by it, that is, not by way of mode or attribute, 
but only by way of idea; and it no more follows that 
the soul or mind is extended because extension exists 
in it alone, than it does that it is red or blue because 
those colours are on all hands acknowledged to exist 
in it, and nowhere else." (Prin., xlix.) This view 
of extension existing in the mind as idea and not as 
mode or attribute, is somewhat in accord with the doc- 
trine of Berkeley already noticed, that ideas are not 



PEECEPTION OF MATTER 131 

modes of mind, but distinct and separable realities in 
our mind. Further, there seems to be involved in 
these teachings the doctrine which was more expressly 
and fully set forth afterwards by Kant, that the idea 
or appearance of extension can subsist in the mind as a 
form of sense where there is not the attribute of exten- 
sion, or can arise and exist entirely without and apart 
from real extension. We would here avouch, before 
going any farther, that this doctrine appears to be ab- 
solutely unfounded and improbable. Eather it should 
be maintained, that real extension is the indispensable 
condition of the appearance or idea of extension; that 
if real extension were not present there would not be 
the idea ; that the idea must have a foundation in the 
attribute or reality; that, as Berkeley in fact seems at 
times to hold, the idea has the real attribute of exten- 
sion or is itself actually extended. The conception that 
the idea and the attribute of extension are inseparable, 
that the idea cannot exist without the attribute, would 
render Berkeley's theory of extension of ideas more 
certain and finished than it can be on the supposition 
that idea exists apart from or independently of the 
attribute or of real extension. 1 

Further, though Berkeley plainly affirms, as in pas- 
sages already quoted, that color and extension are in- 
separably united, and must subsist together in the 

i Both the general forms of our sensibility, extension and time, be- 
cause of their universality and necessity, must be supposed to differ, in 
relation to the structure and productivity of the mind, from the par- 
ticular matter or content of sensations, the particular colors, sounds, 
etc.- The ideas of the general forms have their foundation in, and are 
but revelations of, real attributes of mind, real extension and time. 
The ideas are produced by, or are produced from, the attributes; though 
they are never empty of or divorced from particular sense-matter. We 
cannot reasonably ascribe to the mind a creative potency equal to the 
genesis of the ideas of extension and time from the extensionless and 
timeless. Extended colors are produced by the extended. 



132 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

mind, yet in other places lie appears to contradict him- 
self by asserting that color is not extended and may 
be known as without extension. In the New Theory of 
Vision, when comparing and contrasting the two kinds 
of extension, namely, "tangible extension' ' and "visi- 
ble extension," and affirming their entire heterogeneity 
and disparity, he appears to hold that we may perceive 
color without extension; and, in general, that by sight 
we have original knowledge of light and colors, but not 
of extension in any dimension, not depth, nor trans- 
versal extension either lineal or superficial. Colors, 
without real extension in themselves, he seems to mean, 
become by association signs of the original and imme- 
diate experiences of extension, that is, the tactual and 
muscular experiences, and thus afford us a symbolized 
or mediate cognition of extension and space. 

The most faulty part of Berkeley's speculation on 
spatial extension is his confused, uncertain and errone- 
ous conception of the nature of extension, distance and 
space. According to his notion apparently, space has 
no existence apart from the muscular sensations ac- 
companying the movements of our bodily organs. His 
teaching seems to involve in embryo what may be called 
the muscular-sense theory of the nature and cognition 
of space, which has been so elaborately developed by 
psychologists in later days. He remarks: "When I 
excite a motion in some part of my body, if it be free 
or without resistance, I say there is space ; but if I find 
resistance, then I say there is body ; and in proportion 
as the resistance to motion is lesser or greater, I say 
the space is more or less pure. So that when I speak 
of pure or empty space, it is not to be supposed that 
the word space stands for an idea distinct from, or con- 
ceivable without body and motion [and for something 



PEECEPTION OF MATTER 133 

existing outside the mind]. . . . When therefore sup- 
posing all the world to be annihilated besides my own 
body, I say there still remains pure space, thereby noth- 
ing else is meant but only that I conceive it possible for 
the limbs of my body to be moved on all sides without 
the least resistance; but if that too were annihilated, 
then there could be no motion, and consequently no 
space.' ' (Prin.y cxvi.) The outcome of this doc- 
trine is, that the idea of space and space itself consist 
of certain pure temporal series of sensations. But 
it would seem that pure temporal series of sensations, 
muscular, or both tactual and muscular howsoever com- 
bined, could never of themselves constitute or originally 
reveal and measure extension or space. 1 

Notwithstanding the apparently very considerable 
lack of correctness, completeness and consistency in 
Berkeley's doctrine of mental extension, he evidently 
taught at times that extension is a property of ideas, 
or sensations and percepts, and that we have immediate 
knowledge of extension in them; as also, that there is 
no extension, or no other extension, outside ideas and 
mind. We have asserted above that, when and so far 
as Berkeley taught the extension of sensations and 
percepts, he promulgated a true doctrine, and took a 

i As maintaining extension to be an original property of color, and 
as opposing incisively the Berkeleian and muscular-sense hypothesis of 
spatial extension, I quote briefly from two eminent psychologists of our 
time: — 

Professor James: "Retinal sensations are spatial; and were they 
not, no amount of 'synthesis' with equally spaceless motor sensations 
could intelligibly make them so." {Psychology, II. 277.) 

Professor Ktilpe: "The most original space determination, that of 
which the eye is capable, altogether independently of movement, is ex- 
tension. The field of vision first seen by the congenitally blind after 
operation, — seen, i.e., before the patient has learned to put a definite 
spatial interpretation upon his eye movements, — is extended." (Out- 
lines of Psychology (Titchener tr.), p. 369.) 



134 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

very definite and manifest step beyond Descartes and 
Locke. We have also ventured to affirm that, though 
entirely contrary to the thought and purpose of Berke- 
ley, it is one of the most significant forward strides 
ever made in the science of the perception of the ex- 
ternal. It has this importance because it exhibits one 
of the primary conditions of the perception of the ex- 
ternal more expressly and positively than it was ever 
exhibited before. 

The cognition of material objects, considered as ex- 
tended, figured and solid realities outside and inde- 
pendent of the mind, depends upon two principal condi- 
tions supplied by the mind itself; namely, mental ex- 
tension, extension of sensations and percepts, and men- 
tal causation; or extension within the mind, and the 
causal relation within the mind. These provisions be- 
ing in the mind, and therefore immediately and cer- 
tainly known, are the means, the sufficient but indis- 
pensable media, for the perception of the outer material 
objects. Both conditions are consciously treated of and 
maintained by Berkeley; the former imperfectly and 
faultily, as we have just noted; and the latter more 
truly and fully, as will be seen hereafter. 

As to extension and the other primary qualities of 
the supposed external matter, he earnestly upholds, 
as we have seen, the doctrine that they are as really 
in the mind as are the secondary qualities ; and in rec- 
ognizing and maintaining the subjectivity of the pri- 
mary qualities, he thought he was effectually "scoop- 
ing" the materialists or those who contested for the 
existence and the mediate perceptibility of external 
matter. 

In contending for mental extension or the extension 



PERCEPTION OF MATTER 135 

of ideas, Berkeley wrought one very important result ; 
namely, he made provision, yet altogether contrary to 
his own desire and intention, against the gravest flaw in 
Locke's doctrine of external perception. As already 
observed, one of the primary principles in Locke 's the- 
ory of the mediate perception of material objects is, 
that there is a resemblance between our ideas and the 
primary qualities of the objects. But Locke never rec- 
ommended this doctrine of resemblance by any scien- 
tific proof. Nay, in the advocacy of it he seems to have 
involved himself in helpless inconsistency. For he 
believed that ideas or sensations are unextended; and 
obviously an unextended sensation cannot resemble or 
copy, or be a true representation of, an extended thing. 
It can afford no basis for inferring or imagining such 
an external thing. So far Locke's theory of mediate 
perception of the extended external by " agreement' ' 
or "conformity" was untenable and came to naught. 

But at this juncture Berkeley comes forward with 
what is a most important contribution to the theory. 
He maintains that sensations are not unextended, but 
extended. He indeed insists, on the ground of the ex- 
tension of sensations and percepts, that the so-called 
primary qualities of matter are really within the mind, 
and not at all outside ; that external matter has no ex- 
istence; and that consequently Locke's theory of the 
representative perception of matter is inept and nuga- 
tory. However, instead of disproving the existence 
of matter and overthrowing Locke's theory of the per- 
ception of it, as he expected and designed, he is in fact, 
as already noted, laboring for the very opposite end. 
In the extension of sensations he recognizes and af- 
firms a property by which sensations may copy or truly 
represent material objects as really as one extended 



136 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

idea or percept may represent or be like another; and 
supplies to Locke's theory what enables it to contend, 
if for nothing more, at least certainly for this, that the 
mediate perception of matter and the reality of matter 
are possibilities. 

Sensations, it may be held, are resemblances, by 
their actual and original extension, of the extension of 
external bodies. A tactual sensation may be as to 
extension a true copy of the surface of an impressing 
body. The sensations of compressed limbs or parts, 
associated with the muscular and with the ocular sen- 
sations, may come to mirror the tri-dimensional ex- 
tension of bodies. Ketinal sensations, colors, origi- 
nally or in themselves extended in two dimensions, to- 
gether with the ocular muscular sensations, becoming 
associated and correlated with the larger extensions of 
the tactual and motor sensations of the larger organs, 
become symbols and representations of these larger ex- 
tensions, then, besides, of the extensions of external 
objects small and large which the organs apprehend, 
and, farther, of the largest extensions and spaces. In 
this manner, to use Berkeley's language, " there are 
two sorts of objects apprehended by the eye, the one 
primarily and immediately, the other secondarily and 
by intervention of the former.' ' (New Theory of 
Vision, L.) 

But the immediately and certainly known internal 
or mental extension, while indispensable, is yet not suf- 
ficient of itself for the perception, inference or even 
surmise, of extended reality outside the mind. Sub- 
jective extension does not prove Berkeley's conclusion 
that there is not objective extension; but still it does 
not in itself alone prove, or form the basis of proof, that 
there is. Extension of percepts, and possibility of re- 



PERCEPTION OF MATTER 137 

semblance to external extended objects, do not evince 
actual resemblance, or the actual existence of such ob- 
jects. Something more is required for the mind to 
know that there really are external extended things. 
Some further means is necessary to enable the mind 
to accomplish that unique and most wonderful feat, 
namely, the passage by thought or perception to the 
apprehension of objects entirely beyond itself; — a feat 
deemed indeed so extraordinary by idealists that for 
their part they forever declaim it to be impossible. 

The second and conjoint means necessary for the 
cognition of external objects, is mental causation, the 
conscious relation of cause and effect within mind. 
For the perception or even imagination of extended 
external realities, there must be, beside subjective ex- 
tension, subjective causation. There must be con- 
sciousness of both extension and causation as within 
the mind, before there can be the perception of them 
as without the mind. The immediate knowledge of the 
internal is the necessary foundation, medium or means 
for trustworthy mediate knowledge of the like external. 
With the possession and union of these two subjective 
conditions, the mind can pass in perception entirely 
beyond itself, it can empirically cognize truly what is 
wholly outside and independent. 

Both Locke and Berkeley fully recognize and main- 
tain subjective causation, in their express statements 
of the mind's production and control of its ideas or 
operations. Locke holds that our clearest idea of 
power is derived from the activity of mind; not only 
from its activity in causing motions of the body, but 
from its effort in producing and reflecting on its own 
"operations." He says: "We find in ourselves a 
power to begin or forbear, continue or end several 



138 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

actions of our minds, and motions of our bodies, barely 
by a thought or preference of the mind ordering, or, as 
it were, commanding the doing or not doing such or 
such a particular action.' ' And: "I thought it worth 
while to consider . . . whether the mind doth not re- 
ceive its idea of active power clearer from reflection on 
its own operations, than it doth from any external sen- 
sation [perception]. (Essay, II, xxi, 4.) He consid- 
ers, as already observed, also, though somewhat indef- 
initely, the very significant contrast between ideas pro- 
duced or controlled by our will, and ideas which we can- 
not avoid entertaining or which are forced upon us; 
and asserts that the latter ideas compel the supposition 
of external causes. I repeat his remark: "There is a 
manifest difference between the ideas laid up in my 
memory (over which, if they were there only, I should 
have constantly the same power to dispose of them, 
and lay them by at pleasure), and those which force 
themselves upon me and I cannot avoid having. And 
therefore it must needs be some exterior cause, and 
the brisk acting of some objects without me, whose effi- 
cacy I cannot resist, that produces those ideas in my 
mind, whether I will or no" (IV, xi, 5.) The princi- 
ple of subjective causation, with the contrast between 
ideas produced, and ideas not produced, by our own 
will, is the main principle, beside the principle of re- 
semblance, in Locke's theory of the perception of ex- 
ternal bodies. 

Berkeley accepted and taught the chief tenets of 
Locke's doctrine of mental causation, but with more 
explicitness and fulness. He frequently dwells on the 
contrast in every man's experience between ideas 
"caused," "excited" by himself, "dependent" upon 
himself, and ideas "independent" of himself; and as 



PERCEPTION OF MATTER 139 

frequently affirms that from his ideas which are inde- 
pendent of himself, a man deduces the existence of 
causes distinct from himself. He dwells also on the 
difference between the ideas in the two instances with 
respect to vividness, regularity, etc. "The ideas 
formed by the imagination, ' ' says Berkeley, ' ' are faint 
and indistinct ; they have besides an entire dependence 
on the will. But the ideas perceived by sense, that is, 
real things, are more vivid and clear, and . . . have 
not a like dependence on our will. There is therefore 
no danger of confounding these with the foregoing; 
and there is as little of confounding them with the vi- 
sions of a dream, which are dim, irregular, and con- 
fused. And though they should happen to be never 
so lively and natural, yet by their not being connected, 
and of a piece with the preceding and subsequent trans- 
actions of our lives, they might easily be distinguished 
from realities." (Third Dial.) In this manner ideas 
are clearly distinguished, by Berkeley, both as to their 
causes and their qualities. 

As was remarked above, Berkeley agreed entirely 
with Locke in holding that we have no immediate 
knowledge of realities external to ourselves or dis- 
tinct, but only a mediate knowledge through ideas 
caused in us by them. Locke asserted that thus we 
have a mediate knowledge of material objects. But 
such mediate knowledge of material objects Berkeley 
specifically and emphatically denies; for the reasons, 
already noticed, that matter "in the common accepta- 
tion of the word" signifies an "unthinking, inactive 
substance"; that an "inactive thing cannot be a cause, 
and an unthinking thing cannot be the cause of 
thought"; that "spirit alone can act." He argues 
more forcibly, that we cannot have a representative 



140 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

knowledge of matter by our ideas, or know that its 
qualities are copied by our ideas. "You neither per- 
ceive matter objectively," he observes generally, "as 
you do an inactive being or idea, nor know it as you 
do yourselves, by a reflex act ; neither do you mediately 
apprehend it by similitude of the one to the other; nor 
yet collect it by reasoning from that which you know 
immediately." (Third Dial.) He holds therefore 
that we have no means or medium of knowing matter ; 
and concludes finally that in truth matter cannot exist. 
But while we can have no mediate knowledge of matter 
as a cause through ideas as effects, we still can thus 
have a mediate knowledge of other spirits ; for spirits, 
unlike matter, can contain or possess ideas, and, unlike 
matter again, are active and can produce ideas in us. 
"We cannot," avers Berkeley, "know the existence of 
other spirits otherwise than by their operations, or the 
ideas by them excited in us. . . . The knowledge I have 
of other spirits is not immediate, as is the knowledge 
of my ideas ; but depending on the intervention of ideas 
by me referred to agents or spirits distinct from my- 
self, as effects or concomitant signs." (Prin., cxlv.) 
He says again: "It is evident that the things I per- 
ceive are my own ideas, and that no idea can exist un- 
less it be in a mind. Nor is it less plain that these 
ideas, or things by me perceived, either themselves or 
their archetypes, exist independently of my mind, since 
I know myself not to be their author, it being out of 
my power to determine at pleasure what particular 
ideas I shall be affected with upon opening my eyes or 
ears. They must therefore exist in some other mind, 
whose will it is they should be exhibited to me." (Sec- 
ond Dial.) In this fashion, according to Berkeley, we 



PERCEPTION OF MATTER 141 

have an entirely trustworthy mediate knowledge of 
spirits — of other human spirits, but particularly of the 
Supreme Spirit, God. Says Philonous of the eternal 
Mind: "When I deny sensible things an existence out 
of the mind, I do not mean my mind in particular, but 
all minds. Now it is plain they have an existence ex- 
terior to my mind, since I find them by experience to be 
independent of it. There is therefore some other mind 
wherein they exist, during the intervals between the 
times of my perceiving them; as likewise they did be- 
fore my birth and would do after my supposed annihi- 
lation. And as the same is true of all other finite cre- 
ated spirits, it necessarily follows there is an omnipres- 
ent, eternal Mind, which knows and comprehends all 
things, and exhibits them to our view in such a manner, 
and according to such rules as he himself hath ordained, 
and are by us termed the laws of nature." (Third 
Dial.) 

In arguing for the mediate knowledge of other spir- 
its, Berkeley employs not only in this manner the prin- 
ciple of causation, with the contrast of ideas caused 
and ideas not caused by our own will, but also the prin- 
ciple of resemblance or similitude. We reason from 
our own spirit to other causes like it ; from our own ex- 
perience as a spirit in causation, we infer that all 
causes distinct from ourselves, all other causes, are 
spirits. He asserts: "I have . . . in myself some sort 
of an active thinking image of the Deity . . . My own 
mind and my own ideas I have an immediate knowledge 
of; and by the help of these, do mediately apprehend 
the possibility of the existence of other spirits and 
ideas. Further, from my own being, and from the de- 
pendency I find in myself and my ideas, I do by an act 



142 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

of reason necessarily infer the existence of a God, and 
of all created things in the mind of God." (Third 
Dial.) 

In our cognition we discriminate between finite spir- 
its and the Infinite Spirit by the difference of the ideas 
they excite in or convey to ns. The ideas conveyed to 
us by the Infinite Spirit are superior in number, order, 
connection, greatness, splendor, perfection. "If we 
attentively consider, ' ' remarks Berkeley, ' ' the constant 
regularity, order, and concatenation of natural things, 
the surprising magnificence, beauty, and perfection of 
the larger, and the exquisite contrivance of the smaller 
parts of creation, together with the exact harmony and 
correspondence of the whole, but, above all, the never 
enough admired laws of pain and pleasure, and the in- 
stincts or natural inclinations, appetites, and passions 
of animals ; I say if we consider all these things, and at 
the same time attend to the meaning and import of the 
attributes, one, eternal, infinitely wise, good, and per- 
fect, we shall clearly perceive that they belong to the 
aforesaid spirit, who works all in all, and by whom all 
things consist." (Prin., cxlvi.) Again: "I conclude 
there is a mind which affects me every moment 
with all the sensible impressions I perceive. And 
from the variety, order, and manner of these, I con- 
clude the author of them to be wise, powerful, and 
good, beyond comprehension. . . . The things by me 
perceived are known by the understanding, and pro- 
duced by the will, of an Infinite Spirit." A practical 
result, of supreme moment in the conception of Berke- 
ley, in thus disproving the existence of matter, and 
proving the existence of spirits, follows: "Both scep- 
tics and atheists are forever silenced upon supposing 
only spirits and ideas." 



PERCEPTION OF MATTER 143 

The principle of subjective causation, with the con- 
trast of ideas caused and ideas not caused by our own 
volition, reproduced from Locke, and in this manner 
employed by Berkeley in the demonstration of the ex- 
istence of other spirits, but also held, in the most pos- 
itive opposition to Locke, to possess not the slightest 
validity as proof of the existence of external matter, 
warrants much more than Berkeley grants. The truth 
seems to be that, contrary to Berkeley, the principle is 
as logically and cogently applicable in proof of the 
existence of matter as of the existence of spirits; or 
that his argument for objective spirit as a cause, may 
be as fairly and rightly used to prove objective matter 
as a cause. It is indeed not so applicable with Berke- 
ley's erroneous notions of the nature of ideas and the 
nature of matter. But when these notions are cor- 
rected; when ideas are taken in their true nature and 
true relation to the mind, not as realities distinct from 
mind, now imparted to it, now withdrawn, but as modes 
of mind, existentially inseparable from it; and when 
matter is taken in its real character, not as an 
inactive, but as a resisting and active, substance, 
the case is quite different. With this understand- 
ing of the nature of ideas and of matter, there appears 
no sufficient reason for denying that material ob- 
jects may occasion, by their resistance, impressions, 
activity, the rise of ideas in the mind, and that 
their existence as causes, as certainly as the existence 
of spirits, may be logically inferred from ideas as 
effects. With the very important aid furnished by ex- 
periences of causality, there can be formed a worthy 
theory of the mediate knowledge both of other spirits 
and matter; a theory which affords us, in agreement 
with Berkeley's conviction, a trustworthy cognition 



144 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

of spirits, and, contrary to his conviction, a trust- 
worthy perception of matter. 

It may he observed in general, respecting the great 
importance, even the indispensableness, of subjective 
causality and the contrast of sensations and affections 
caused, and not caused, by conscious effort, in external 
perception, first, that if there were no experience of 
causation within the mind, within the sphere of con- 
sciousness or immediate knowledge ; that if there were 
no experience of the mind's production of sensations, 
of its control of emotions, and determination of reso- 
lutions ; there would be nothing to suggest or occasion 
the thought of causation outside the mind, there would 
be no means by which to imagine, or form any sort of 
conception of, a distinct cause or power. The mind 
might have sensations produced by external causes; 
but, in the total lack of experience of causation within 
itself, it would be quite destitute of the means or ma- 
terials for the thought or conjecture of causes distinct 
from itself. Yet psychologists have often argued for 
the perception of external causes, in disregard of this 
principle or on assumption of the contrary. The con- 
ception or inference of a separate cause, power, or ex- 
ertion, could then be only the creation of a mind which 
had no experience of causation or of production and 
control. But there is no sufficient ground for holding 
that the mind is capable of such a creation; it can at 
most only know immediately and mediately what is. 
In the immediate knowledge of its own causation, it 
has the indispensable medium for the knowledge of 
causes distinct from itself. Mental causation is the 
necessary platform from which thought reaches extra- 
mental causation. 

Above, in the discussion of the causation of ideas, 



PEECEPTION OF MATTER 145 

note has several times been made of the conscious con- 
trast, clearly marked by both Locke and Berkeley, be- 
tween ideas produced by our own volition and ideas not 
so produced. This contrast seems yet to deserve a 
moment's distinct and special attention. We have, 
first, as in the interactions of our organs, sensations 
produced by the effort or exertion of self. Then we 
have sensations which we know occur without the effort 
of self. It is particularly by this antithesis that the 
mind has the prompting and stimulus to conjecture a 
cause beyond or other than itself. Having had sensa- 
tions that were known to be occasioned by self-exertion, 
and then having the same or similar sensations with- 
out conscious self-exertion, the mind infers another 
cause, a cause distinct from itself, for them. In brief, 
the conscious action of self upon self is a necessary 
ground for the inference of the action of the not-self 
upon self. 

We have now considered the two primary and indis- 
pensable conditions of external perception, namely, 
subjective extension and subjective causation. It is 
important yet attentively to observe that they must 
serve in conjunction. Neither is sufficient by itself. 
Each is a necessary coefficient for the other. As, ac- 
cording to a former remark, subjective extension is not 
adequate in itself as a basis for the inference of a cause 
or any reality distinct from and external to the mind; 
so subjective causation is not adequate for the infer- 
ence of an extended cause external to the mind. We 
could never infer a cause distinct from the mind ex- 
cept through the immediate knowledge of cause and 
effect within the mind; and could never infer a cause 
that is external to the mind and extended except on the 
basis of the immediate experience of subjective exten- 



146 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

sion. In other words (1) the immediate knowledge of 
sensation out of sensation, and the duality or relation of 
cause and effect, within the unity of the mind, are the 
necessary foundation for the inference of a reality 
or cause separate from the mind; and (2) the immedi- 
ate knowledge of extended sensation — an extended in- 
ternal effect — is the necessary foundation for the infer- 
ence of an extended external cause. The mind could 
never infer an extended cause from an unextended ef- 
fect. 

In this wise through the union of these two great 
provisions, we have an adequate means for the percep- 
tion of spiritual objects, and of material objects as well, 
— of realities that are distinct from self, and external 
and extended. We have therefore impliedly the means 
of disproving the Berkeleian immaterialism. These 
two paramount conditions Berkeley himself recognized 
and adopted as facts ; and in doing so supplied the in- 
struments of his own refutation. By them we are able 
successfully to meet particularly such special chal- 
lenges as the following made by Berkeley and his dis- 
ciples : How can an idea be like anything else than an- 
other idea? Is it " sense to assert that a colour is like 
something which is invisible"? How can it be known 
that the things perceived, that is, our ideas, "are con- 
formable to those which are not perceived"? Must 
not a world external to the mind and independent be 
forever inaccessible? These questions were asked 
with the belief that an answer to them was absolutely 
impossible. 

But the mental properties noted and maintained 
by Berkeley himself furnish a fair reply to these de- 
mands. The extension which Berkeley positively 
claims for sensations can be and is like the extension 



PERCEPTION OF MATTER 147 

of external material objects that excite them by im- 
pressions. Again, by a visual extended copy, by a 
color, we do mediately perceive a thing, as to its exten- 
sion, that in itself is invisible or not immediately seen. 
The extended color is a representation and sign of what 
in itself is unseen. That proposition cannot be unin- 
telligible to a Berkeleian. And by a tactual sense-copy 
we feel what in itself cannot be felt; or we perceive 
mediately what is unperceivable directly in itself ; or we 
know mediately what we do not know immediately. 
Further, we know that our internal sensation or per- 
cept is, as to the primary qualities of extension and fig- 
ure, like the extension and figure of the external ob- 
ject and cause. This knowledge is involved in, or per- 
haps it should rather be said, is identical with the infer- 
ence we make of extra-mental objects on the basis, as 
was above considered, of immediate experience of sub- 
jective causality and of subjective extension. This in- 
ference is cogent. In it there is included a genuine 
comparison, as to extension, of the internal percept 
immediately known with the external object. Our per- 
cept or representation is known to conform to the ex- 
ternal object, because the object is cognized not inde- 
pendently of, but through, the representation. There 
is no imperative need of a previous comparison of idea 
and object, or of a previous and independent knowl- 
edge of the object. Comparison is in the inference of 
the object. The inference comprehends or is identical 
with comparison. Finally, by this inferential process, 
it becomes intelligible in general how mind and object 
"get together," or how object becomes "accessible" 
to mind. 

There are other questions and facts, additional to 
those we have treated of, which, though not of primary 



148 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

importance, well deserve attention in the discussion of 
the perception of matter, but which we must here pass 
over. For instance, this question : As we have imme- 
diate knowledge of a mental cause only, how come we 
thereby to the mediate knowledge or inference of a 
non-mental or material cause; and the question as to 
the discrimination of our body from external objects, 
or other bodies from ours; and also the question, how 
we arrive at the conclusion that the primary qualities 
of our percepts represent external properties, but the 
secondary qualities not. 1 Eespecting the first question 
it may be observed casually, that there is no sufficient 
basis for maintaining that the mind, the mind of a 
child, must find it a long and difficult procedure to dis- 
criminate between external extended animate, and ex- 
ternal extended inanimate, causes, or between mental 
and non-mental. 2 

We proceed, finally, to review, but in the briefest 
manner, Berkeley's place in the historical development 
of the philosophy of the perception of the external, espe- 
cially of matter. And first of him as a successor of 
Locke. It might seem unreasonable to speak of Berke- 
ley as a successor of Locke in any other sense than as 
simply following him in time with no doctrinal relation- 
ship. Certainly Berkeley is not a follower, but a deter- 
mined antagonist, of Locke's teachings respecting the 
cognizability and reality of the material world. He re- 
jected absolutely Locke's dualism of spirit and matter. 

i These questions receive considerable attention in the author's earlier 
work, The Principles of Knowledge. 

2 Dreams' are cited by Berkeley and his followers as evidence that 
ideas are entirely independent of bodies outside the mind and require not 
the existence of such bodies. But the proof is inconclusive; since 
dreams are but derivative and secondary phenomena, and can never 
have importance in the discussion of external perception like that of 
the original phenomena, presentations. 



PERCEPTION OF MATTER 149 

Nevertheless, in some of the most important principles 
of Locke 's philosophy, he is obviously a close follower. 
He accepts fully Locke's doctrine that we have imme- 
diate knowledge of our mind and ideas only; that we 
can have nothing but mediate knowledge of any reality 
outside our mind or distinct. Again, he accepts fully 
Locke's teaching respecting subjective power and caus- 
ation, and the contrast between ideas caused by our 
conscious effort, and ideas not so caused. Further, 
he agrees with Locke as to the existence of other dis- 
tinct spirits, or the plurality of spirits. And it may 
be claimed that, even in respect to Locke's doctrine of 
the representative perception of matter, which is so 
nearly related to these other teachings of his, Berkeley 
is in a mode a follower ; is a follower in this sense, that 
he maintains an element necessary for the completion 
of the Lockian doctrine, or that thus, if he does not 
lead the doctrine along the line of its true development, 
he indicates that line. This Berkeley effects, though 
certainly without any thought or design of so doing, 
by his tenet of mental extension, or of sensations as 
possessing the primary qualities of extension and fig- 
ure. By the recognition and affirmation of this real 
character of sensations and percepts, an essential sup- 
plement is provided for Locke's theory of representa- 
tive perception, or his doctrine that our ideas of the 
primary qualities of matter resemble them. It is 
shown how ideas may be truly copies of external qual- 
ities; and how Locke's representative doctrine may be 
made complete, or be rendered reasonable and tenable. 
But in indicating the true course of the development 
of Locke's theory, Berkeley also, by the same means 
and by his special teachings concerning mediate knowl- 
edge, betokens in general the course of the development 



150 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

of the true philosophy of external perception. He sug- 
gests, still in entire self-contravention, the principles 
and mode for the construction of a complete and genu- 
ine theory of the empirical cognition of the material 
world ; a theory which should be superior to and should 
supersede the speculations of the idealists regarding 
the reality and perceivability of external matter, and 
also the hypotheses of the apriorists. 



CHAPTER IV 

TRUTH 

Among the philosophical subjects most earnestly 
considered at the present day is that of the Nature of 
Truth. There are two common conceptions or defini- 
tions of Truth. First, Truth is often made identical 
with fact, reality, actuality. Secondly, it is often de- 
fined as "agreement of idea with reality" or "corre- 
spondence of thought to its object." * But it should be 
remarked that while many unite in these latter defini- 
tions and others of like import, yet this does not imply 
unity among them of doctrine; for, with concurrence 
in definitions, there are very notable divergences in 
meanings respecting both the character of reality and 
object and the character of agreement or correspond- 
ence. In the present discussion, truth will be taken 
in the second sense, as correspondence or agreement 
of thought, idea, belief, with its object or with reality. 
The special understanding had of reality and of cor- 
respondence will be exhibited hereafter. Truth is thus 
supposed to be an entirely subjective or mental attri- 
bute — a property of our thought. 

Note may be made of four sorts of truth or corre- 
spondence of thought, answering to four kinds of ex- 

i This difference of connotation has been thus stated : "Truth may 
be understood in two ways — in an objective and in a subjective sense. 
Objectively, truth is being itself: it is the necessary and essential re- 
lation of things, which would continue to be what it is even if I were 
not present to form a thought of it. Subjectively, truth is the conformity 
of the thought to its object." (Janet, Theory of Moral Science, p. 107.) 

151 



152 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

istences: first, correspondence of thought to the per- 
manent substantial mind to which it belongs or of 
which it is a transitory experience ; second, correspond- 
ence of thought to other thought; third, correspond- 
ence of thought to past events (yet this might be re- 
garded as involved in the second) ; fourth, correspond- 
ence of thought to external or extra-mental reality. 

The first mode of correspondence here mentioned, 
that of thought to mind, is of course no fact, if there 
be no substantial mind, no permanent mental reality 
(and there are enough to say there is none). Very 
naturally it has no recognition at all from those psy- 
chologists who hold that the only mind is the pure 
stream of thoughts. But it has received no attention, 
or very little, from those who believe in the existence 
of real mind. Kant supported real mind or mental 
noumenon in coexistence with mental phenomena, 
though as unknowable; but instead of maintaining 
agreement of phenomenon or thought with noumenon, 
he rather maintained total disagreement. This is one 
of the gravest errors of the Kantian psychology. One 
instance of the presumed disagreement respects time. 
The time of phenomena or thoughts has no agreement 
with an attribute or with the nature of noumenon; 
for, as supposed, the latter in itself is timeless. Con- 
trary to this view, as we have argued in a different 
connection, the fact is not disagreement or opposition, 
but agreement. The time of phenomena or experiences 
is an expression or revelation of the time of real mind. 
We remark incidentally, that it would be interesting 
to be told what correspondence there might be, if any, 
in a mode of consciousness to the hypothetical ante- 
cedent non-substantial "permanent possibility. ' ' 

The only mode of truth, or correspondence of 



TRUTH 153 

thought, recognized by many idealistic psychologists, 
is the second in our list, correspondence of thought to 
other thought. The only reality they acknowledge is 
psychical fact, pure mental or subjective experience; 
they admit no reality outside of mind or independent 
of sensation or thought; and, therefore, when they de- 
fine truth as correspondence of thought to its object, 
or agreement of idea with reality, they mean agreement 
of idea with idea, or of thought with thought, or of a 
thought with the context or system of our thoughts; 
they mean the congruence of a portion of experience 
with another portion or with the antecedent sum of 
experience. All is purely subjective; all is between 
mental fact and mental fact. 1 A feature not creditable 
to many of their discussions, one always more or less 
confusing and disconcerting to readers, is the employ- 
ment of dualistic phraseology instead of the unitarian 
phraseology that is proper to them and obligatory. 

In the present discussion, the mode of truth, or cor- 
respondence of thought, which shall be the main con- 
cern, which shall receive chief attention, will be the 
fourth specified, namely, correspondence of thought to 

i "Truth means, according to humanism, the relation of less fixed 
parts of experience (predicates) to other relatively more fixed parts 
(subjects) ; and we are not required to seek it in a relation of ex- 
perience as such to anything beyond itself." (James, Meaning of Truth, 
p. 70.) 

"If a novel experience, conceptual or sensible, contradict too em- 
phatically our pre-existent system of beliefs, in ninety-nine cases out of 
a hundred it is treated as false. Only when the older and the newer 
experiences are congruous enough to mutually apperceive and modify 
each other, does what we treat as an advance in truth result. In no 
case, however, need truth consist in a relation between our experiences 
and something archetypal or trans-experiential." (lb., p. 134.) 

"Ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become 
true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with 
other parts of our experience." (James, Pragmatism, p. 58.) 

Other descriptions of similar import have been given of truth; as that 
truth is "consistency," "systematic coherence," "unity." 



154 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

external reality. We accept the definition that truth 
is the correspondence of thought to its object, with the 
understanding here that object is an object-object, that 
is, an object outside and independent of mind and con- 
sciousness. This manner of procedure will be in ac- 
cord with the more popular and general conception of 
truth. In the various definitions of truth as the cor- 
respondence, or agreement, or harmony, or conform- 
ity, of thought or idea with reality, the conformity of 
inside idea with outside object has been with most men 
more usually in mind. It should yet be remarked in 
particular of the assumed correspondence of thought 
to material objects, that thought is supposed to be es- 
pecially representative of their spatial extension, or 
shape and magnitude, and their motions. 

But it must be observed that truth regarded as cor- 
respondence of thought to external object can hardly 
be treated by itself alone, or without its bringing into 
consideration at times especially the correspondence 
of thought to thought. This ensues from the fact that 
our knowledge of external things is entirely mediate. 
We know them not immediately, but only mediately 
through the modes, the ideas, of the mind. Hence, all 
comparison of things as known at the present with the 
same things as known in the past, and all comparison of 
external things with one another, inevitably involves 
cognizance of the correspondence of thought to thought. 
Further, it is obtrusive that harmony of outside re- 
lated objects produces harmony of inside representa- 
tions. There is manifest "adjustment of internal re- 
lations to external." And an idea may have at once 
the two known correspondences, — (1) to an external 
object and (2) to another idea. 

Here an important question arises and calls for mo- 



TRUTH 155 

mentary attention before going farther ; namely, What, 
in view of the above accepted definition of truth or a 
division of truth, is the difference between truth and 
knowledge! Much of our knowledge is representa- 
tion; it is knowledge because of agreement or corre- 
spondence with its objects. Are truth and knowledge, 
then, really identical? The proper answer to the ques- 
tion seems to be this : Truth is knowledge considered 
with particular reference to the exactness and com- 
pleteness of its correspondence to the object. Men 
commonly, in speaking of or claiming truth, have spe- 
cial regard to these properties of knowledge. They 
have also therewith an accordant specially strong feel- 
ing of assurance or certitude. 

In seeking to maintain the doctrine that truth, or an 
important portion or mode of truth, is the correspond- 
ence of our ideas to objects external to the mind, we 
must encounter at the very beginning the most deter- 
mined opposition of idealists. They contend with all 
their argumentative force, united often with scorn and 
derision, first, against the existence of any object out- 
side mind or consciousness; and then, of course, sec- 
ondly, against the possibility of correspondence be- 
tween thought and any such object. Moreover, they 
insist that, even if such objects did exist, we could never 
know whether our thought corresponded to them or 
not. To claim correspondence, they hold, is a gross 
petitio principii; for it is assuming that an object is 
known which has not been proved to be known; it is 
supposing that a truthful correspondence can be discov- 
ered by a comparison of our thought with an object 
which has not been, and can never be, perceived. The 
following declaration is an example of their mode of 



156 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

reasoning : ' ' The fundamental difficulty with a ' corre- 
spondence theory' is this: it assumes a reality with 
which that which claims to be true may be compared, 
in order to find out whether it really be true or not. ' ' x 

There is nothing to do but to grapple with this ad- 
verse plausible, but delusive, doctrine. It is quite evi- 
dent, however, that the reasoning against correspond- 
ence and known correspondence is identical in sub- 
stance with the primary argument of Berkeley against 
the possibility of a representative knowledge of ex- 
ternal matter, with which we have already contended in 
the chapter on the Nature and Perception of Matter. 
Berkeley, as will be remembered, argues in the person 
of Philonous against Hylas (Third Dial.) in these 
words: "It is your opinion the ideas we perceive by 
our senses are not real things, but images or copies of 
them. Our knowledge therefore is no further real, 
than as our ideas are the true representations of those 
originals. But as these supposed originals are in them- 
selves unknown, it is impossible to know how far our 
ideas resemble them; or whether they resemble them 
at all. We cannot therefore be sure we have any real 
knowledge. ' ' 2 

We have presumed boldly to combat this central 

i Philosophical Dictionary (Baldwin), II. p. 720. 

2 Later Berkeleians reproduce the sentences of the master with much 
fidelity: — 

"If the world outside the mind is copied by the world inside the mind, 
how can we ever know whether the copy conforms to the original ?" "The 
real outside the mind, being inaccessible, falls away." (Bosanquet, Es- 
sentials of Logic, p. 10 and p. 19.) 

"To talk about knowing the external world through ideas which are 
merely within us is to talk of an inherent self-contradiction. There is 
no common ground in which the external world and our ideas can meet." 
(Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory, p. 83.) 

"Whether or not our ideas correspond with a transcendent reality it 
is futile to ask, because it is impossible to determine." ( Schiller, Riddles 
of the Sphinx, new ed., p. 87.) 



TRUTH 157 

position of the Berkeleian immaterialism, and trust to 
have shown that it is not really so formidable as it ap- 
pears to be, that it is not as immured from attack and 
even overthrow as idealists have steadfastly contended 
to this day that it is. 

It should be observed here, as was observed before, 
first, that there is no such need, as idealists assume 
there would be, of a precedent and distinct knowledge 
of an object, as the condition of comparing our thought 
with the object and apprehending its correspondence 
to the latter. We must not have a separate and inde- 
pendent knowledge of thought and also of object, and 
then, by a comparison of thought and object, discover 
their agreement or correspondence. It is not ' ' requisite 
to go out of ourselves, — out of our faculties, — to obtain 
a knowledge of the objects by other faculties," and 
thus ascertain the agreement of representation with 
object. Comparison of thought with object, and 
knowledge of their agreement, are involved in the in- 
ferential process which constitutes our knowing the 
object. The inference of the object, the comparison 
of thought with object, and the ascertainment of their 
agreement, are indeed one and undivided. When I 
infer, I in the same act compare and discover agree- 
ment or correspondence. 

The chief, the supremely important, question in the 
whole subject of the knowledge of external objects and 
the truth of our knowledge, is the question of the possi- 
bility and reality of a representative perception of 
them. In our previous contesting of the Berkeleian 
position, we have argued that a representative cogni- 
tion of things outside the mind is possible and actual, 
A primary provision and condition of the cognition is 
spatial extension within mind, both the spatial exten- 



158 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

sion of sensation and the reciprocal exteriority of sen- 
sations. The internal, mental, extension is a peculiar 
and cardinal principle of Berkeley himself. He con- 
tended, and contended convincingly, that the primary 
quality of extension is inseparably united with the sec- 
ondary qualities, as colors, and must therefore be as 
really in the mind as they are. But he carried the 
principle to an unjustifiable extreme, in holding that 
all extension is in the mind, that there is none outside. 
He thought the old division and distribution by which 
the primary qualities of magnitude and figure are 
placed outside the mind, and the secondary qualities in- 
side, is by the fact of mental extension decisively an- 
nulled; and that the imagined external world of ex- 
tended objects consists wholly of extended percepts in 
the mind. 

The principle of mental extension, though expressly 
and fully received and advocated by Berkeley, serves 
a great end of which he had no conception, and which 
is directly opposed to everything he designed and be- 
lieved. It affords us a means of a true representative 
knowledge of external extended realities. The exten- 
sion of sensation may copy the extension of an outer 
impressing object. Sensation outside of sensation 
provides a basis of immediate knowledge for the in- 
ference of an object outside of mind. 

Another primary condition, necessarily associated 
with metal extension, of the cognition of external ob- 
jects, is mental causation; as the control of the mind 
over sensation, attention and the processes of thought. 
This also is a principle expressly recognized and used 
by Berkeley. We could never infer the reality of ex- 
ternal causation or resistance, if we did not have a 
ground for the inference in the immediate experience 



TRUTH 159 

of internal causation, including experience of the con- 
trast between sensations caused, and sensations not 
caused, by our own effort. These principles of mental 
extension and mental causation we have already ex- 
pounded as, in their conjunction, largely constituting 
the necessary and sufficient basis of the perception of 
the external, and need not repeat the argument further. 
By them in combination, we perceive realities that are 
external, extended, enduring and resisting; percept 
corresponds to object, and is known to correspond. It 
may be remarked in addition that our perception, as 
inferential and representative, is probably promoted 
and aided by inherited disposition. 

It should be now observed that, according to these 
principles of external perception, truth is a matter 
of growth, progression, degrees. All divisions of our 
knowledge grow in the course of time in their agree- 
ment with outer facts and realities. An illustrative 
instance is the perception of the sun and the correlative 
positions of the sun and horizon. Our primitive or 
earlier perception is true to the circular form of the 
sun, and to the constant and regular changes in the 
correlative positions of sun and horizon. But the per- 
ception has a false part, namely, in the inference or 
assumption that these changes in positions are caused 
by the movement of the sun around the earth. In the 
course of experience we learn that the changes are not 
caused by the movement of the sun, but by the rota- 
tion of the earth upon its axis. Then, by exclusion of 
the original false inference, and by inclusion of the new 
knowledge, the correspondence of our perception to 
the reality is very considerably corrected and increased. 

In the further exposition of the main principle, that 



160 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

truth is correspondence of thought to external reality, 
we shall proceed with special reference to the three 
following questions which have become notable by re- 
cent discussions : first, the question, How far we Make 
truth, and how far it is independent of our making; 
second, the question of the Fixedness and Stability of 
truth ; third, the question of Utility as the Criterion of 
truth. 

1. Much has been said in recent times about our mak- 
ing truth, and even about our making reality. It is 
frequently affirmed that there is a " cognitive mak- 
ing' ? of both. Sometimes truth and reality are iden- 
tified, and by the making of truth is meant also the 
making of reality. 1 These pronouncements recall the 
Kantian theory that the "understanding makes na- 
ture. ' ' According to the well known teaching of Kant, 
the understanding or intellect, by means of the ma- 
terials of sense given to it, and by the forms of sense, 
time and space, and also by its own forms or categories, 
as substantiality and causality, — by means of these 
provisions, fabricates the apparent external world or 
nature. The later extreme idealists, called pragma- 
tists, go an important step beyond this. They hold not 
only that the intellect, or thought, or the cognitive 
process, makes nature, but that it makes it in obedi- 
ence to our pleasure, designs, wishes, will. They thus 
impute a remarkable control over thought to willing. 
The primary action of mind is supposed to be, not 

i "The 'making of truth' is necessarily and ipso facto also a 'making of 
reality.' " (Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 1918.) "Epistemologically 
speaking, so far as our knowledge goes or can go, the making of truth 
and the making of reality seem to be fundamentally one" (p. 426). 
"Truth and Reality grow for us together in a single process which is 
never one of bringing the mind into relation with a fundamentally alien 
reality, but always one of improving and extending an already existing 
system which we know" (p. 185). 



TRUTH 161 

cognition, but conation: a speculation which has been 
exploited with manifest extravagance. Besides, they 
reckon to willing or wishing and thought a very sig- 
nificant priority and supremacy over reality; they 
claim for them a very notable independence and liberty 
in their productive or creative function. It is of course 
held that thought is free from control by external re- 
ality; but it is also supposed to be free from control 
or determination even by internal fixed reality or by 
constant innate mental forms, categories, axioms. 
The Kantian collection of classified ready and stable 
categories is rejected. Axioms and categories grow, 
or are produced, as our designs or needs require, and 
are kept as long as they are useful. They are tenta- 
tive postulates. On this account these theorists are 
properly denominated pragmatic idealists. 1 

The questions of our wishing and thought making 
truth and making reality, are quite different and should 
be kept apart. There is a sense in which our mind 
does make truth: but there is no proper sense in which 
it makes reality. The mind may be said to produce 
all its percepts or representations of other things, and 
to give them truth: but it never produces in the least 
degree the reality or substance of things. It does not 
produce itself: and as certainly it does not produce any 
other thing. 

i "The genera] structure of the mind and the fundamental principles 
that support it also must be conceived as growing up. like the rest of our 
powers and activities, that is. by a process of experimenting, designed 

to render the world conformable to our wishes." "The axiomatic first 
principles whereby we organize and hold together our knowledge, are 
neither the products of a passive experiencing, nor yet ultimate and in- 
explicable laws or facts of our mental structure." | Schiller, in Personal 
Idealism, p. 64.) 

"Cosmic space and cosmic time, so far from being the intuitions Kant 
said they were, are constructions as patently artificial as any that 
science can show." | James. Pragmatism, p. ITS.) 



162 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

The idealistic illusion respecting our intellection and 
wishing making the external world of matter and space, 
is decisively contradicted by the very many and vari- 
ous natural objects and human works which exist and 
have long existed in perfect independence of us, to 
which our thinking and wishing and willing never made 
the least contribution. For instances, take the immedi- 
ate theatre of our life and action and the surrounding 
works of nature; take the Bocky Mountains and the 
Alps; take those much smaller objects, the human re- 
mains from the very remote past, dug out of their 
ancient beds, as the Gibraltar skull, the Mauer jaw, 
the Galley Hill skeleton; also the productions of the 
labor of past races of men, as the Pyramids of Egypt ; 
such ethical and legal monuments as the Mosaic Deca- 
logue, and the Code of Hammurabi with the broken 
stone upon which it was engraved. It seems farcical 
to hold that any of these long-abiding natural objects, 
great or small, or any of these enduring fabrications 
by generations of men long extinct, owe anything in 
the least of their reality to any process of thought or 
willing in us. For us of the present they are certainly 
already existent and complete. The primary office of 
our intellect respecting these objects, is to discover and 
represent, not to make or create. 

On the other side, Professor James explicitly avers : 
"When we talk of reality 'independent' of human 
thinking, then it seems a thing very hard to find. . . . 
It is what is absolutely dumb and evanescent, the merely 
ideal limit of our minds." 1 Contrary to this Fichtean 
conception and all such assertions, we must contend 
for the existence in the world of many perfectly fa- 
miliar extended objects, of definite sizes and shapes, 

i Pragmatism, p. 248. 



TRUTH 163 

of definite duration, of definite motions, which are and 
always have been absolutely independent of human 
thought. Of these things we have exact and assured 
science. Pragmatists are far too subservient in ac- 
cepting as true, and then too zealous in exaggerating, 
boasted sophisms of the Kantian epistemology. Pro- 
fessor James says again: "Keality, we naturally 
think, stands ready-made and complete, and our in- 
tellects supervene with the one simple duty of describ- 
ing it as it already is. But may not our descriptions, 
Lotze asks, be themselves important additions to re- 
ality V 11 When, for instance, we perceive and de- 
scribe a house of a certain length, breadth and height, 
we add nothing at all to these dimensions. They were 
and they remain in perfect independence of our per- 
ceiving minds ; and so of many other constructions of 
human toil and very many objects of nature. In gen- 
eral, our thinking is certainly far more subject to in- 
dependent external realities than are external realities 
to our thinking. 

Special importance is sometimes ascribed to our 
wishes in the making of reality, after the manner of 
the following declaration: "The world is plastic and 
may be moulded by our wishes." 2 There can be no 
doubt that the world is to a degree plastic to our 
wishing. We manipulate, arrange, fashion, many of 
its objects according to our desires; but surely our 
desiring or wishing is far more determined by the 
world than the world by it. Wishing is not a perfectly 
free and uncontrolled action, self-originated and self- 
directing, subject to no antecedents and conditions, at 
the very first a possibility dependent upon nothing be- 

1 Pragmatism, p. 256. 

2 Schiller, in Personal Idealism, p. 61. 



164 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

yond its own caprice, as some seem to regard it; but 
is in subordination to the coercive confinement and re- 
quirements of antecedent and surrounding independent 
reality. Our wishes must conform to what is stable, 
and to what is changing, in the independent world. 
While it is true that the world is moulded by our wishes 
to some extent, yet that extent is certainly scant com- 
pared with the extent our wishes are moulded by the 
world. 

We will here notice very briefly two particular reali- 
ties cited by pragmatic idealists as instances of the 
creative function of human thinking and wishing. 
These are the atom, and external void space. The 
atom, though certainly no object of actual vision, is 
not, as seems to be held, a creation of our thought, or a 
"conceptual construction of unreal character/ ' For 
thought comes to it, so to speak, primarily, not by 
creating it, but by an ideal division of the ordinary ac- 
tual simple extension of sensation or of tangible ob- 
ject. If it were not for the common really experienced 
sense-extension, there would never be any thought of 
the atom. The atom is indeed ideal, but as an ideal 
extension it is absolutely dependent upon the concep- 
tual division of an experienced extension ; to which di- 
vision we are yet led by our interests and wishes. It 
is therefore as real as, or cannot be less real than, the 
real and truly known larger extension from which it 
was deduced. 

The empty and extensive outer space is by many 
considered as an ideal construction. It is sorted into 
"perceptual" and "conceptual" space: perceptual 
space being the space of our primitive and near per- 
ception; and conceptual, the space of the geometri- 
cians, who conceive it as one, continuous, homogeneous, 



TRUTH 165 

permanent, and immensely extensive. In fact, there 
is but one space, and it is always the same. It is a 
permanent and identical reality, altogether independ- 
ent of our constructive thought. It is not a product 
or creation of our intellect; nor, we should add, is it 
an object of innate or a priori cognition. Our cogni- 
tion of it is entirely empirical; but also progressive; 
and the only variation or diversity respecting space is 
not a diversity of kind, but a diversity in the succes- 
sive stages in our knowledge of it. Perceptual space 
is the space of our earlier and less correct and com- 
plete knowledge. Conceptual space is the space of our 
later and more perfect knowledge. There is but the 
one identical space, known by progressive pure ex- 
periential cognition. No characteristic of our knowl- 
edge of space is inconsistent with the experiential the- 
ory. Accordingly, intellect produces our complex 
thought of space, as of a material object; but not space 
itself. It constructs a representative percept, making 
it conform, or making it true, to the independent re- 
ality. The process of this construction I have treated 
of elsewhere. 

While we have the strongest reasons for denying 
that our wishing makes reality, or makes our percep- 
tion of reality, we must admit an important effect it, 
with other motives, has upon reality and our dealing 
with the latter. Wishing determines our selection of 
the parts or objects of the world; what objects of the 
multitude known and knowable shall be held in atten- 
tion, and what shall be shut out; the objects we shall 
use, and those we shall leave. It is generally acknowl- 
edged that there is some truth in such declarations as, 
"perceptions depend upon what we come prepared to 
see," and "the wish is father to the thought." Un- 



166 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

doubtedly wishes arising from our prepossessions, prej- 
udices, interests, passions, thus often dominate our 
thinking or percepts and beliefs of reality. But it is 
still a fundamental fact that we cannot desire, feel in- 
terest in, or voluntarily aim at, an object which we do 
not know. Independent knowledge of objects precedes 
as the condition of the relative emotional activities. 
When emotions have been aroused by the independent 
perception of objects, they unquestionably often react 
powerfully on perception, leading to exclusive consid- 
eration of particular objects, and to a more exact and 
complete knowledge of them; but there is no actual 
originating of reality and perception. On this sub- 
ject Dr. Ward has observed : "Though an object must 
be cognized before it can be liked or disliked, still it 
is to interesting objects that the subject mainly attends, 
and it is with these, therefore, that the subject acquires 
a closer and preciser acquaintance." "It is true that 
what we take and what we find we must take and find 
as it is given. But, on the other hand, it is also true 
that we do not take — at least do not take up — what is 
uninteresting; nor do we find unless we seek, nor seek 
unless we desire.' 9 x Thus desires and other impulses 
exercise often a directing power over our thought, by 
holding it to special objects and inciting it to a more 
exact and thorough knowledge of them; and by other 
degrees and modes of influence, as by inducing it to 
construct of materials and categories supplied to it 

i Naturalism and Agnosticism, II. pp. 131, 133. 

"Sensations are forced upon us, coming we know not whence. Over 
their nature, order and quantity we have as good as no control." "That 
they are is undoubtedly beyond our control ; but which we attend to, note, 
and make emphatic in our conclusions, depends on our interests." 
(James, Pragmatism, pp. 244, 245.) 

"The blind tendency of passions to subjugate intelligence." (Sir W. 
Hamilton, Logic, p. 401.) 



TRUTH 167 

new combinations which should serve as "working hy- 
potheses. " But they do not move thought to make 
reality, and they create nothing themselves. It is the 
common and not unjustifiable belief that, when "the 
wish is father to the thought," the child is rather 
liable to be what it ought not to be in the lack of cor- 
respondence to reality. In truth, very generally our 
wishes, purposes, volitions, themselves are and must 
be formed upon, conditioned by, adapted to, realities 
that exist and are known antecedently to and independ- 
ently of them. Too often those who ascribe such 
great superiority to conation over cognition are blind 
to indisputably stable and weighty facts. There is too 
prevalent the more comprehensive tendency to the in- 
ordinate and unreasonable exaltation of man and his 
will and intellect ; and to the ignoring or abasement of 
the independent realities, laws and conditions to which 
his existence and activity are in fact so completely 
subject. This tendency is a constitutional vice of ideal- 
ism. 

As was remarked above, the making of truth is an 
altogether different matter from the making of real- 
ity, and should be treated separately from it. If we 
must deny that the mind, by its thinking and wishing, 
makes reality, we must admit that, in a significant 
sense, it makes truth, that is the correspondence of its 
thoughts, ideas, percepts, to outer objects. The char- 
acter of this making we shall now proceed to con- 
sider. 

It must first be observed that this theory of the pro- 
duction of truth does not involve uncertainty as to our 
ever really possessing truth, or inevitable liability to 
much and constant mistake, error and illusion in our 
perceptions; it does not make truth a thing of mere 



168 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

arbitrariness and caprice; it does not justify doubt 
and alarm. On the same grounds and conditions on 
which the mind produces its percepts, it produces their 
truth, that is to say, their accuracy as percepts or as 
representations. These are in fact one or but stages 
of one production. We have already contended, 
against sceptics and idealists, especially against Berke- 
ley, that the mind is capable of constructing real rep- 
resentations of external sensible reality, setting forth 
the means, conditions and process. These and what- 
ever serves to prove the possibility and actuality of 
real percepts, will accomplish the same for their truth. 
In the production of percepts and truth, the mind or 
the intellect is not an absolutely free and undetermined 
will or cause. It does not make and mould according 
to its momentary whim or purpose, without any de- 
pendence for gifts of materials, and without subjec- 
tion to set laws and conditions of action. It is de- 
pendent upon means and conditions both internal and 
external. First, according to general belief, it is and 
must be supplied with a stock of elementary materials, 
varied sense-data, a "f actual' ' provision, with which 
to operate. The intellect cannot form percepts and 
judgments without materials to form them out of; it 
cannot make truth or anything else out of nothing. As 
to the sense-data, Professor James remarks in general: 
"All schools must allow that the elementary qualities 
of cold, heat, pleasure, pain, red, blue, sound, silence, 
etc., are original, innate, or a priori properties of our 
subjective nature, even though they should require the 
touch of experience to awaken them into actual con- 
sciousness, and should slumber, to all eternity, with- 
out it. . . . The originality of these elements is not, 
then, a question for dispute. The warfare of philoso- 



TRUTH 169 

phers is exclusively relative to their forms of com- 
bination. ' ' x Professor Dewey, reporting the views 
of Lotze, says : i ' The ultimate material antecedents of 
thought are found in impressions, which are due to 
external objects as stimuli. Taken in themselves, these 
impressions are mere psychical states or events.' ' 
"Sense-experience furnishes the antecedents; thought 
has to introduce and develop systematic connection — 
rationality." 2 But it should be noted that writers 
are often vague and uncertain respecting the strict na- 
ture of the original elementary sense-materials or 
sense-data ; respecting what is really contained in them, 
what are their real properties, or what they supply to 
the intellect without the action of the intellect itself 
or before the intellect is supposed to begin its opera- 
tions with them. In other words, they fail to define 
the exact character of "crude" or "immediate" expe- 
rience as antecedent to intellection proper. 

Many assume that the raw sense-matter is in itself 
extensionless and timeless, and that extension and time 
are forms imposed upon it by the mind. This is to 
follow the Kantian dissection of experience, and seems 
to be one of the greatest errors in mental analysis. We 
cannot properly suppose that spatial extension is a 
form produced by the mind or thought and imposed 
upon the sense-matter; but that it is an original prop- 
erty of at least a portion of the sense-matter ; not im- 
parted to it, but belonging to its own self from the first 
as a constitutional attribute. We are justified in con- 
tending that the idea of spatial extension is a part of 
the original and elementary material given in sensa- 
tion to our intelligence ; and not only the idea of vague 

i Psychology, II. pp. 618, 619. 

2 Studies in Logical Theory, pp. 27, 29. 



170 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

and indeterminate extension or extensity, but also of 
definite measures. The like may be said of time. 
Time is no form put upon the primitive timeless sense- 
data by mind or thought. Sensations have time or 
duration not as a gift from without or from a separate 
faculty of mind, but as their own property. They are 
before and after one another from the first and so 
known, without any proper agency of creative or con- 
structive "thought." Their succession is a primitive 
and original relation and fact of experience. 

There are other forms or categories, beside spatial 
extension and time, which are provisions for our intel- 
lect, conditions of perception and truth, and not at all 
the arbitrary creation of our thought acting in compli- 
ance with some purpose or desire or for some satis- 
faction. Of these are the ideas of causality, substance, 
identity and permanence. They are often called forms 
of the intellect itself. A great error of many psy- 
chologists has been to treat them as forms lying in the 
mind, or as, so to speak, loose phenomenal possessions, 
and not as representing, and as necessarily related 
to, constitutional attributes of mind. Kant apparently 
supposed, at least in some instances, that causality 
was an a priori form of the understanding, but, like 
time, representing no property of the mind in itself; 
that a causationless mind could hold or possess the con- 
scious conception of causation. But it seems more 
credible that the experience of causation, power, or 
determining antecedent, is the revelation in conscious- 
ness of a property or action of real mind ; that the con- 
stitutional property is the necessary ground of the idea; 
that the idea, like the idea of time, would never rise 
if not from the real property. It may be said that 
the idea is true to the real property, or has a true cor- 



TRUTH 171 

respondence to it; and is not a mere phenomenal ex- 
perience wholly nnlike any real mental attribute or 
wholly "distinct from the mind and heterogeneous." 

From the primitive and original materials and prin- 
ciples of knowledge supplied to it, the intellect is capa- 
ble of making truthful representations of external re- 
alities. The definite extensions and times of the sense- 
data enable it to construct accurate percepts of the defi- 
nite extensions and times of outside objects. In our 
cognition of external things we are therefore not left 
to be victims of doubt and uncertainty, but are given 
good grounds of confidence in the truth of our repre- 
sentations. 

In all the making of percepts and truth, the primary 
function of mind, we should again remark, is that of 
combination. The intellect puts together the original 
elements given to it, and can compose only such struc- 
tures as they make possible. It is a fabricator or archi- 
tect, but not a creator. But though not capable of crea- 
tion or creative synthesis, it is able to unite the ma- 
terials and categories furnished to in an endless va- 
riety of compositions corresponding to the illimitable 
variety of external realities. It can ideally enlarge the 
elementary experiences, and ideally divide them, as 
by abstracting one property of an original unitary ex- 
perience from other properties. Out of primitive ex- 
tended unitary experiences the faculty, by conceptual 
combination and division, forms true ideas of very 
large extensions, and also of very small extensions. 
Again, out of the temporal units of our primitive ex- 
periences it forms true ideas of immense, and also of 
infinitesimal, times. 

But it must be yet maintained further that in making 
true representations of external things, our intellect 



172 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

is stimulated and aided by the external things them- 
selves. Objects of definite properties make definite im- 
pressions on the mind; the mind responds by making 
definite, truthful, representations of the objects. Per- 
cepts are therefore framed and rendered true to ex- 
ternal realities by two sorts of means and conditions : 
(1) the internal, namely, the active intellect with its 
inseparable data of sense and inseparable forms and 
categories; and (2) the external, namely, the external 
realities themselves, near and remote, which influence 
the internal construction. This union of activity and 
passivity in the mind's perceptions of the extra-mental 
has been already dwelt upon. 

From these conditions of the true knowledge of outer 
objects, one thing, before remarked, is obvious, namely, 
that the truth of our knowledge is an affair of degrees. 
All knowledge of externality is progressive, being 
gradually made more accurate and complete by repe- 
tition and additions. The perceptions of a man are 
truer than those of a child; and the perceptions of a 
creature of developed senses are truer than those of 
one of undeveloped. External objects in many in- 
stances remain long the same; they change very little 
or not at all; but our knowledge of them changes, it 
continually grows, becoming by frequency of observa- 
tion more exact and full. In our perceptions of exter- 
nal objects there are many illusions, which we gradually 
understand and overcome by repeated and varied ex- 
periences; our perceptions become truer, more corre- 
spondent, to the real and fixed character of the ob- 
jects. The moon seems much larger at the horizon 
than in the zenith ; but we learn in time that its magni- 
tude is constant, and that there is a delusive variation 
in our perception. Hence, what is called by some in- 



TRUTH 173 

creased conformity, or approximation, of reality to our 
intelligence, is in fact approximation of our intelligence 
to reality, an increasing accuracy of our representation 
of reality. 

2. Let us go on from the question of our making 
truth to that of the fixedness and stability of truth. 
Many are proclaiming to-day the changing nature of 
things and of our experience. They say that all things 
flow, and that truth flows with them. And very often 
the general change or flow is spoken of as if it were not 
slow, but rapid or rushing. It is undeniable that change 
is a primary characteristic of all knowable reality and 
all our knowledge and experience. The present state 
of the world and of all that is therein, is the result of 
many and remarkable mutations; and our experience 
is subject to incessant variation. But we must reflect 
that in respect to many things the changes are not rapid 
and great, but slow and minute. They are very often 
slight compared with the permanence and sameness 
of things; and the knowledge and truth of things are 
uniform and constant during the life of the individual 
and of generations. 

The enduring sameness of our knowledge and truth 
results from two great causes, one objective, the other 
subjective; namely, the identity and permanence of 
knowable realities, and the constancy of the internal 
materials and forms of our perception. The sameness 
and stability for us of many external realities are un- 
questionable ; as of many parts and features of the 
earth, its mountains, valleys, contours, and of many 
constructions by the labors of generations of men long 
vanished. Among pragmatic idealists there is, as it 
seems, a singularly obtuse and obstinate disregard and 
denial of the existence of many such ancient and per- 



174 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

manent objects, and of many that have undergone but 
comparatively slight changes in the progress of ages. 
Respecting the subjective conditions of truth, it is prob- 
able that the constitutional properties of the human 
mind, or the primary forms and categories of thought, 
as spatial extension, time, and causality, have remained 
the same or nearly the same for many ages, like the 
human cranial cavity, or size of the brain. 1 The long 
existing perfection of brain and general structure of 
the present type of men is presumably a safe token of 
a corresponding constant sameness of the internal ma- 
terials, forms and processes of knowledge, and of the 
resulting percepts and truth. 2 

Hence, though our intellect makes truth, there is yet 
no ground for asserting or fearing great changeable- 
ness and instability of truth. There is no sufficient oc- 
casion for expecting that the truths of this year will 
all be errors in the next, or the truths of this genera- 
tion all false for future generations. Human intellects 
are not infallible; they have made and kept errors, 
they have changed in their affirmations and denials of 
truth, have often reversed their judgments; but un- 
doubtedly there have been, and it seems probable there 
will continue to be on earth, many certain, universal, 
and stable truths. 

i "In size of brain, and in stature, the race [Cro-Magnon] which flour- 
ished in the south of Europe at the close of the Glacial Period was one 
of the finest the world has ever seen." (Keith, Ancient Types of Men, 
p. 66.) 

"We may allow a period of at least 200,000 years to have elapsed since 
the modern type of man appeared: the probability is that his antiquity 
is infinitely greater, for he is fully evolved when we meet him first." 
(lb., p. 79.) 

2 Professor James observes : "Our fundamental ways of thinking 
about things are discoveries of exceedingly remote ancestors, which 
have been able to preserve themselves throughout the experience of all 
subsequent time." (Pragmatism, p. 170.) It appears likely that they 
will preserve themselves to our remote descendants. 



TRUTH 175 

It deserves consideration and assent, by the way, that 
rapid variation, mutability, instability, of truth is not 
always necessarily implied, as at first view it may seem 
to be, by such propositions as, that an idea is true so 
long as we believe it profitable to our lives. For an 
idea may be found profitable during the whole length 
of life ; and an idea which may be found profitable to 
us may have been just as really profitable to genera- 
tions before us, and may continue so to generations yet 
to come. The Golden Rule is an eminently stable moral 
norm. It was as good two thousand years ago as it 
is to-day ; and may remain not less good for thousands 
of years ahead of us, or, for aught any school of prag- 
matic idealists seem able to tell us, throughout eternity. 

3. We pass on to treat of the question, Whether util- 
ity or practical value is the criterion of truth, or How 
far our ends, purposes, satisfactions, determine knowl- 
edge and truth. Pragmatic idealists often express 
themselves in declarations such as these: "The true 
is useful, and the useless is untrue"; "An idea is use- 
ful because it is true, or it is true because it is useful" ; 
"The true is the name of whatever proves itself good" ; 
"The true and the satisfactory mean the same"; "An 
idea is true so long as we believe it is profitable to our 
lives"; "All realities influence our practice, and that 
influence is their meaning for us"; "The truthfulness 
of a judgment is nothing more nor less than its prac- 
tical value for the determination of the means necessary 
for human welfare." Contrariwise, to many earnest 
minds it seems a degradation of truth thus to identify 
it with utility or to subject it to utility as a test. 

Taking truth as we have been taking it, to mean the 
agreement or correspondence of thought with its (ex- 
ternal) object, we may readily accept the proposition, 



176 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

that truth is the useful or good, without, it would seem, 
doing any dishonor to the dignity and character of 
truth ; and accept also even the proposition that reality 
is the useful, without any actual depreciation of reality. 

That the real is the useful, that external things, ani- 
mate and inanimate, or very many of them, at any rate 
the nearer, have meaning, importance, for us, because 
of their practical effects, appears to follow inevitably 
from the fact that they and we are parts or members 
of one evolved system, and by the process of evolution 
have all been wrought into mutual adaptations. All 
are governed by the same universal laws, and held to- 
gether in relations of reciprocal influence ; are correla- 
tive and interacting members of one world. When 
one member suffers, the others suffer with it ; when one 
benefits, the others benefit too. They form, in short, 
a self -preserving and not a self-destroying system; a 
system not divided against itself, but united for itself. 
Assuredly, then, because of this fixed relationship and 
interaction, within the same systematic whole, it is safe 
to say that the real is the useful. The world is coher- 
ent, concatenated, is one : therefore things always influ- 
ence us, affect us ; they forward our wishes, purposes, 
efforts ; they determine our pleasures and satisfactions. 

The same facts may be variously classified, or ar- 
ranged under different categories or rubrics. The 
present instance of ranking realities as useful is easy 
to effect; yet when done it has no claim to special im- 
portance. It is no considerable advance upon common 
thought; for men have always been even forced to 
recognize the practical worth of all things they know 
and deal with. To say that the real is the useful, is 
indeed but exploiting the obvious. 

Still, though the reality and the utility of things are 



TRUTH 177 

always closely related, are in fact inseparable, they are 
not the same. Reality is more than utility. Things 
are more than their mutual adaptations. Adaptation 
or relation is not substance, — it is a mode of substance. 
Things have their individual substance as the condition 
of their adaptations or relations ; — therefore reality has 
precedence and primacy. Also, nothing is more com- 
mon with men than consideration of the reality or es- 
sential qualities of an object apart from its utility, or 
than making judgments of existence apart from judg- 
ments of value. Such abscissions of our thought are 
performed continually and with ease. We think, for 
example, of the shape, magnitude and motion of a ma- 
terial object without paying the slightest regard to its 
utility; and the like is substantially true of many ob- 
jects of many sorts. Again, objects differ very much 
in their usefulness to us ; as a general rule, the near are 
more valuable than the remote; yet their actuality is 
the same. To an American, the desert of Gobi and the 
pyramid of Cheops have scanty practical worth, they 
contribute but little to his profit and satisfaction, they 
may be easily neglected; but undeniably they are, and 
he believes them to be, as real as the field he tills or the 
house he lives in. 

The same considerations that demonstrate that the 
real is the useful, and similar ones, demonstrate that 
the true is the useful. When the idea by which we 
know, and by means of which we handle, an object, ac- 
curately conforms to it, the idea "works," it is profita- 
ble and satisfactory ; and the more so, the more accurate 
and complete the conformation. It "works," it is in 
harmony or pleasant agreement, with other ideas, espe- 
cially others that have been tried and tested. And also 
its object "works"; this is found tractable and man- 



178 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

ageable, and useful for our purposes, as likewise other 
objects with which it is nearly associated. Because of 
the close systematic connections of things, they will 
all work together for the same ends. On the contrary, 
if the idea of an object is not true but false or if the 
correspondence is very defective, if the idea contradicts 
the uniformity of nature, then it will not work, it will 
clash with other ideas, and will cause vexation. And 
its object will be unwieldy and refractory, not pliable to 
our wishes and designs. It will be taken for what it 
is not ; and we will therefore be brought not into har- 
mony, but into collision, with it. The object cannot be 
made to serve our purposes fashioned upon past true 
ideas, but will oppose and frustrate them. The case 
will be like trying to get along with people whom we do 
not understand and who do not understand us, when dis- 
agreements and antagonisms will prevail. In general, 
the greater the truth of ideas the better they enable us 
to perfect our relations with things, to adapt ourselves 
more thoroughly to them and them to us ; and the more 
finished mutual adaptation is always productive of in- 
creased satisfaction. So universally is this the fact 
that we may assert with assurance that the true is the 
useful. 

The working value of ideas is always a matter of the 
foremost importance, because our life is so largely de- 
signed to be a life of action, striving for ends, practical 
accomplishments. The world is our stage, and we are 
to be ever purposeful and energetic performers. This 
is in accordance with the teachings of the philosophers 
and seers of all ages. It is in harmony with the teach- 
ings of religion, as is clear from the following forceful 
injunctions of the Bible: "And now also the axe is 
laid unto the root of the trees; therefore every tree 



TRUTH 179 

that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and 
cast into the fire"; 1 "Be not weary in well doing"; 2 
" Being fruitful in every good work." 3 Many songs 
of religion spiritedly express the same ; as that by Dod- 
dridge, often sung in the churches : 

" Arise my soul; stretch every nerve, 
And press with vigor on. ' ' 

Then, inasmuch as our life is preeminently for prac- 
tical exertion, all ideas of reality, all thought of our 
relations to things, all truths, must be tested by their 
worth for such a life. An idea that is not profitable 
for action and welfare must be untrue or meaning- 
less. 

Yet truth, like reality, though always united with, 
and though it may be always tested by, utility, is not 
identical with it. Truth is more than utility. In their 
close union, truth has the primacy. Ideas that work 
show themselves to be true ; but they work because they 
are true. And so men have always adjudged. Again, 
to treat of the truth of ideas apart from their useful- 
ness, and thus to distinguish it, is of our commonest 
experience. It appears indisputable that with many 
men there is a distinct ardor to acquire true ideas, cor- 
rect and complete knowledge, and a distinct delight in 
the acquisition ; a zeal to know simply for the * ' sake of 
knowing, ' ' or just to ascertain what is and to gratify a 
lively natural curiosity which is awakened by the ap- 
parent illimitable extent and richness of existence. 

Before closing this chapter, it might be found inter- 

i Gospel of Matthew, 3 : 10. 
2 11 Thess., 3:13. 
a Col., 1:10. 



180 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

esting and profitable to examine some of the postu- 
lates, principles, working hypotheses, particularly set 
forth by pragmatic idealists as having their worth or 
being wholly in their usefulness. Let us at least con- 
sider compendiously the most eminent of them, namely, 
theistic belief, or the conception of an intelligent Su- 
preme Being. It is said that the practical effects or 
advantages that attend this religious conception justify 
us in receiving it as a u working hypothesis/ ' 

We should be ready to concede at once that all prin- 
ciples of religion and also of morality (that is, those 
generally believed to be true and obligatory by the most 
advanced communities) are useful, and that utility may 
be applied to them as a criterion. Belief in God seems 
in various ways very beneficial. Kant thought God 
highly valuable as an ideal for the use of our reason 
and intellect. What Jesus says of the Sabbath day 
may be said of other religious ordinances and statutes : 
they were made for man, not man for them. Further, 
whatever is commonly deemed ethical or obligatory in 
character and action is certainly profitable to the indi- 
vidual and society. No one can doubt the advantages 
of purity of heart, and of practicing the precepts that 
inhibit stealing, lying, coveting, adultery, and that en- 
join unselfishness and benevolence. It seems undenia- 
ble that whatever is morally right is useful, and that, 
therefore, utility may be made the test of morality. 
We might probably adopt even the universal postulate, 
that all things were made to be useful. 

But while it seems evident that all principles of true 
religion and morality are profitable, and that profitable- 
ness may be accepted as a criterion for them, yet it re- 
mains a very significant fact that men in all ages have 
reverenced and practiced these principles in many in- 



TRUTH 181 

stances with but little or no thought of the advantages 
that will accrue. They have in this remarkable manner 
held principles apart, so to speak, from their profitable- 
ness, and ignored or been indifferent to the latter. 
They have reverenced and obeyed ethical statutes 
rather because they have thought them to give expres- 
sion to the great and permanent realities and laws of 
the world or nature and to the will of the Creator. 
They have acted not from feelings of advantage, but 
from the quite distinct and peculiar feelings of duty, 
obligation, moral necessity. They have felt bound by 
them, while disregarding, and often but very imper- 
fectly understanding, the benefits to themselves for so 
doing. Men have thus always found it possible and 
easy to reflect upon the world, its great features and 
events, and their own existence as conditioned thereby, 
upon the earth as the permanent theatre of their moral 
agency and requiring certain courses of action, while 
giving little attention to their own profit. Before ev- 
erything else they have felt subordinate to and depend- 
ent upon the great independent realities and laws of 
the surrounding world, and the supreme Will. 

Respecting especially theistic belief, men have in 
many cases thought of, worshipped, and served the Su- 
preme Being, not primarily as a rewarder of service or 
bestower of benefits, but as the producer and sustainer 
of the world, the creator of their own being and the 
conditions and utilities of their life, and worthy in him- 
self, because of his own power, acts, and dominion, of 
the reverence and obedience of his creatures. They 
have had chiefly in mind the divine rights and claims, 
not their own advantages. 

Our knowledge of God, as of every being distinct 
from ourself , is an inference ; and is a worthy inference, 



182 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

because grounded on his cognizable works — as the char- 
acter and regular processes of finite minds and also of 
the material world. As part of the basis of the infer- 
ence, or as a confirmation, are to be reckoned special 
experiences in men of the divine influence upon their 
souls. The evolutional sallies and progressions, and 
the remarkable present synthetic results in the material 
and mental world, evidence a presiding and designing 
mind. A conception of God not so based may be 
deemed untrustworthy; but on this ground a genuine 
and credible inference can be made. But the practical 
consequences of such an inference or belief must not be 
ignored as if unimportant. They have certainly great 
and just influence in confirming our inference of God 
and our trust in it. They have and should have this 
influence because of their relation to the permanent 
facts from which the inference itself is made. Still 
they must not be put first. A true inference of God 
may be drawn without consideration of utilitarian con- 
sequences; and must always have its chief ground in 
the realities and facts of the universe as knowable in 
themselves. The inference of God so formed may also 
be regarded in a manner as a " working hypothesis"; 
because our inference or knowledge of God is progres- 
sive, it grows with our knowledge of the material and 
spiritual realities of the world. Just as our knowledge 
gradually comes more perfectly to correspond, comes 
to be truer, to the constant realities and uniform or reg- 
ular activities of nature, so does our thought of God, 
constructed from that knowledge, come more thor- 
oughly to correspond, or to be true, to the constant real- 
ity of God. 

The extreme teachings of pragmatic idealists respect- 
ing reality and truth are identical with much that has 



TRUTH 183 

long been advocated under the name of anthropomor- 
phism. According to the hypothesis of anthropomor- 
phism, man is the measure of all things; into his 
knowledge of things he imports his own nature or at- 
tributes ; he knows not things as they are in themselves, 
but only according to the forms of his own being or 
thought; he makes all objects, including God, conform 
to his own nature. 

The only spiritual nature immediately known to us 
is undoubtedly our own; and our knowledge of any 
other and higher must be an inference based on the 
knowledge of our own, or be a representation con- 
structed out of its attributes. The idea of God there- 
fore must be to a large extent one formed from human 
faculties — intelligence, will, power — raised to the high- 
est perfection thinkable by us. But our thought thus 
constructed out of human materials, though neces- 
sarily an imperfect, is yet a true knowledge of a dis- 
tinct reality. There are both truth and error in the fol- 
lowing declaration of Paulsen : ' ' Of a superhuman spir- 
itual life we have absolutely no knowledge. . . . We 
read into the higher spiritual life conceived by meta- 
physics the highest phases of our being." 1 It must 
be admitted we have absolutely no immediate knowl- 
edge of God ; but we are not compelled to admit that a 
representative knowledge, possessing some measure of 
truth, cannot be framed from human knowledge of the 
universe and idealization of human nature. 

We have a true, though certainly not a complete or 
perfect, knowledge of a great extent of the universe. 
We know vast measures of its spatial and temporal ex- 
istence, and of its motions and forces. We apprehend 
the wonders of the solar system. Our knowledge of 

i Ethics (Thilly tr.), p. 429. 



184 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

these realities is a true knowledge ; we cognize them as 
they exist in themselves, in their real extension, time 
and relations. This universe, thus known truly, of it- 
self calls for a Being having intelligence and power 
equal to the production and government of it; and we 
are justified in supposing that the author and ruler 
of the cognizable universe has a nature possessing some 
resemblance to that of the creature who can understand 
the universe, and feel wonder and delight in contem- 
plating it. 

The only means in our possession, as above re- 
marked, of forming a representative knowledge of the 
Creator and governing Spirit is by the enlargement of 
our own faculties of intelligence, will and force, to the 
extent in which they may be thought adequate to the 
production and control of the universe as far as it is 
known to us. While a very imperfect, this is yet a 
true knowledge or representation, since it is based upon, 
and produced at the excitation of, a true knowledge, 
as far as it goes, of the universe. Our conception of 
God therefore is not an arbitrary product or pure inven- 
tion of the intellect acting under the spur of desire or 
utilitarian interest, it is not a mere copy of human na- 
ture, it is not simply a " working hypothesis," or a 
u regulative ' ' idea of reason ; but is a true inference and 
representation, having a real and sufficient foundation 
in a true knowledge of the wonderfully constructed and 
stupendous works of God as they exist in themselves 
and of man as in the midst. Our knowledge, as true to 
the cosmos, and to man's character and relation to the 
cosmos, constitutes the trustworthy basis and the oc- 
casion of the loftier knowledge of the Author and Sus- 
tainer of the cosmos. 

THE END 



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